Created
November 23, 2017 13:45
-
-
Save varya/0d7c7cbda7265106d8dfd367629d02da to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
SC5 blog RSS
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| { | |
| "rss": { | |
| "channel": { | |
| "title": "SC5", | |
| "link": [ | |
| { | |
| "_href": "http://sc5.io/feed/", | |
| "_rel": "self", | |
| "_type": "application/rss+xml", | |
| "__prefix": "atom" | |
| }, | |
| "https://sc5.io" | |
| ], | |
| "description": "We Build Leading Digital Services with Cloud Solutions", | |
| "lastBuildDate": "Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:00:20 +0000", | |
| "language": "en-US", | |
| "updatePeriod": { | |
| "__prefix": "sy", | |
| "__text": "hourly" | |
| }, | |
| "updateFrequency": { | |
| "__prefix": "sy", | |
| "__text": "1" | |
| }, | |
| "item": [ | |
| { | |
| "title": "Summarizing News at Junction 2017", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/summarizing-news-at-junction-2017/", | |
| "pubDate": "Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:00:20 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "SC5" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Life at SC5" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Machine Learning" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10444" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>Using the power of machine learning to automatically write summaries or headlines for news articles This week, Europe’s biggest hackathon Junction takes place in Dipoli, Otaniemi. Together with Nordcloud, we are welcoming all AI-minded hackers to join our challenge and revolutionize the news. Our machine learning specialists and cloud architects will be there to support all … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/summarizing-news-at-junction-2017/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/summarizing-news-at-junction-2017/\">Summarizing News at Junction 2017</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<blockquote><p>Using the power of machine learning to automatically write summaries or headlines for news articles</p></blockquote>\n<p>This week, Europe’s biggest hackathon <a href=\"https://hackjunction.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Junction</a> takes place in Dipoli, Otaniemi. Together with <a href=\"http://www.nordcloud.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nordcloud</a>, we are welcoming all AI-minded hackers to join our challenge and revolutionize the news. Our machine learning specialists and cloud architects will be there to support all the competing teams to help them achieve their very best.</p>\n<h2>About Junction</h2>\n<p>Junction is a converging point thousands of developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from around the world. In 2016, Junction provided the biggest hackathon experience in Europe by bringing together 1300 participants from over 70 countries. This year it’s even bigger – 1500 participants representing over 90 nations!</p>\n<p>Hackathons are all about taking something you love, combining it with tech and learning something in the process. Junction brings together hackers, designers, the coolest partners and hardware for one weekend of hacking.</p>\n<p>Junction is not your standard cafeteria hackathon. Junction is meant to be seen, to be heard, to be felt and most importantly to be experienced. Held annually in the cold and slushy Helsinki of late November, Junction is bound to be an unforgettable experience. Junction is the place to design and develop your ideas into actual projects together with like-minded hackers. (text from <a href=\"http://hackjunction.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">hackjunction.com</a>)</p>\n<h2>Our challenge</h2>\n<p>William Shakespeare said, “brevity is the soul of wit”. With access to more computing power than ever before, machine learning is poised to revolutionize news. People in the digital generation want to consume more news, but they don’t always have time to do so. Help us help them by using the power of AI to convert short news articles into condensed, easy-to-digest summaries or headlines, along with a use case and working demo (web app).</p>\n<p>Text summarization is a challenging field that requires some machine learning chops, but a lot of creativity, too — for that reason, we don’t have any hard tech requirements in our challenge. Participants are free to use any learning algorithms, software packages and ready-made services they want. For that all important computing power, we’ve teamed up with AWS to provide contestants with cloud compute to run their models on.</p>\n<p>By using the best of what ML and AI have to offer the challenge is to build a text summarization/headlining engine. Solutions will be judged based on the performance and flexibility of the summarization engine and application originality. The winning team will be awarded with Echo Dot 2nd Generation voice-controlled devices and AWS credits.</p>\n<h2>See you at Junction?</h2>\n<p>With great challenge we also bring the sweetest atmosphere to the AI track with a candy buffet at our stand. 🍭 You can also find us at the Meeting Area on Saturday telling about our(s and Nordclouds) job opportunities. See you at Junction!</p>\n<pre>Photo: <a href=\"https://www.flickr.com/people/151708924@N07/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Junction 2016</a></pre>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/summarizing-news-at-junction-2017/\">Summarizing News at Junction 2017</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Our Re:Invent 2017 Wish List", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/our-reinvent-2017-wish-list/", | |
| "pubDate": "Fri, 17 Nov 2017 12:19:03 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "Mikael Puittinen" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Cloud" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Machine Learning" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Technology" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "AWS" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Serverless" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10435" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>At the end of November, tens of thousands of avid cloud enthusiasts will gather again in Las Vegas for the AWS Re:Invent conference. In anticipation of the event, the Amazon Web Services have already begun rolling out new features and even more updates are expected during and after the event. AWS Re:Invent is bound to … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/our-reinvent-2017-wish-list/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/our-reinvent-2017-wish-list/\">Our Re:Invent 2017 Wish List</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<p>At the end of November, tens of thousands of avid cloud enthusiasts will gather again in Las Vegas for the AWS Re:Invent conference. In anticipation of the event, the Amazon Web Services have already begun rolling out new features and even more updates are expected during and after the event. AWS Re:Invent is bound to send shockwaves throughout the cloud development community, but while we are waiting for the official update releases, here is our product and upgrade wish list for the event:</p>\n<h2>AWS Lambda</h2>\n<p>AWS Lambda is already the beating heart of any modern cloud service built with the serverless paradigm. However, there is still room for improvement and in our opinion, the following additions would enhance the developer experience even further and lower the barrier to entry for the more traditional customers:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>SQS event source for Lambda</strong>. This would ease decoupling of functions and remove the need to use e.g. SNS to signal Lambda about new items in the queue. For real-time scenarios, it would be required to have control on the maximum amount of parallel requests / maximum amount of requests during a given timeframe to ensure that the requests do not exceed processing/throttle limits of downstream services (e.g. REST APIs / databases).</li>\n<li><strong>Lambda “Publish” events in addition to “Subscribe” events</strong>. Currently, the developer needs to explicitly code database writes / message posts to SNS or SQS etc… It would ease to have the possibility to publish Lambda outputs onto other AWS Services (e.g. SNS, SQS, DynamoDB, Lambda, StepFunctions, …).</li>\n<li><b>More Lambda runtimes. </b>Add Node 8, Go, PHP support, please. And while we’re at it, having the capability to deploy your own docker container / build your own runtimes (incl. programming languages, 3rd party libraries, etc…) would also be cool (as in OpenWhisk).</li>\n<li><strong>Remove / Raise the 5min execution time limit</strong>. Sometimes (like when importing large database dumps to RDS) is just not enough.</li>\n<li><strong>Improved performance for VPC scenarios</strong>. When running Lambdas in VPCs, cold starts can be painfully slow (more than 10 second cold start times in some cases). Lambdas should have more consistent and acceptable performance for VPC scenarios.</li>\n<li><strong>Keep Lambda warm option. </strong>In many scenarios, you want consistent performance on at least some of your serverless API endpoints. An option to mark a function as “always warm” or “warm during a given time window” would work wonders in delivering better performance for the more demanding customers without having to shift to a more traditional container or IaaS architecture model.</li>\n<li><strong>Ability to define log group for Lambda function.</strong> Being able to define the log group would ease debugging and streaming of logs to 3rd party log analytics tools. For example, the logs off all Lambda functions related to a logical set or topic could be set to be written to one single log group.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>API Gateway</h2>\n<p>Last month, we were happy to see AWS release <a href=\"https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/11/amazon-api-gateway-supports-regional-api-endpoints/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">API Gateway Regional Endpoints</a>. This was a welcome addition and could signal a step away from the Cloudfront roots of the original API Gateway service. That would open doors for even more improvements. Here are some of the things we’d love to see:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Websocket / Async response support for API Gateway</strong>, or in short, keeping the HTTP connection alive and the ability to push results from Lambda to the open API Gateway connection. This would be useful for requests that cannot be handled synchronously or where the response is delivered in chunks (for example, when returning routing alternatives for a given route).</li>\n<li><strong>VPC support for API Gateway</strong>. As a follow-up to the regional endpoints, it would be useful to be able to deploy the endpoints inside the VPC. This would allow hiding the actual API endpoints from public access (and utilizing custom domains as a public entry point) and opening access for proxying services run inside a VPC (like in a setup where part of the services is implemented using serverless architectures and others use more traditional instance and container based architectures).</li>\n<li><strong>Lambda Proxy mapping for string parameters with multiple values</strong>. Currently the query string “?param=1&param=2&param=3” gives just “3” as the value for the parameter 3 when using Lambda Proxy. It should return the array of provided values (i.e. [1,2,3]). Alternatively, providing the full query string (path including parameters) would allow to implement your own parsing.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Databases</h2>\n<p>DynamoDB is the database of choice when a non-relational database is sufficient for the application, but sometimes, a relational database is needed (e.g. for transaction support, complex queries that involve table joins and so on). These upgrades would make the development of database-backed solutions easier:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>DynamoDB support for burst traffic</strong>. The automatic provisioning of DynamoDB was introduced in 2017. It was a huge improvement for autoscaling the read and write capacity but due to the limitations in the amount of allowed scale-in events it does not work as such for burst traffic patterns. To better support for burst-like traffic, such as scheduled updates, there should be a way to have more frequent scale-ins, or the ability to queue DynamoDB updates.</li>\n<li><strong>Cursor support for DynamoDB. </strong>In many application scenarios, users need to page results over multiple pages. Supporting cursors in DynamoDB would ease the implementation of “next” and “prev” links.</li>\n<li><strong>Relational database as a truly managed service</strong>. RDS is a good start but leaves much of infrastructure planning and implementation to the developer (scaling, replicas, etc…). It would be neat to have a Dynamo-like relational database where developers just define schemas, indexes and the like and the servers are automatically provisioned and scaled in the background. Alternatively, add more powerful capabilities for transaction support and joins to DynamoDB.</li>\n<li><strong>CRUD UI for CloudDirectory</strong>. Something like the DynamoDB console would boost developer productivity with Cloud Directory.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>AI / Analytics</h2>\n<p>Last year, we saw the release of new cognitive services such as <a href=\"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AWS Polly</a>, <a href=\"https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rekognition</a>, <a href=\"https://aws.amazon.com/lex/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lex.</a> During the last month, an updated GPU-enabled instance type “<a href=\"https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/10/introducing-amazon-ec2-p3-instances/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">P3</a>” was released to support the most demanding deep learning problems. Additional improvements in the AI scope that we would be thrilled to see released:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>More advanced Machine learning models</strong>. Besides the current linear / logical regression algorithms, support for the more advanced algorithms such as SVMs, Random Forests or custom (your own) neural networks would make the ML offering close in with its competitors.</li>\n<li><strong>Machine learning optimized Lambda runtimes</strong>. Deploying AI models to Python Lambda runtimes can be a pain due to issues with binary compatibility of the required libraries. It would be great to have the most common Machine Learning libraries (e.g MXNet, sklearn, scipy, numpy). And if these runtimes would be deployed in GPU-accelerated hardware, that would be close to perfect.</li>\n<li><strong>Image-to-text / OCR. </strong>You can now identify objects, persons, emotions on pictures using Rekognition. Text recognition for identifying text elements and their contents on images would be an obvious next step.</li>\n<li><strong>Generic NLP</strong>. Lex can be used to build conversational UIs, but there is no service to extract entities / emotions / etc.. from text. That would be a welcome addition to the service portfolio.</li>\n<li><strong>Reinforcement learning as-a-service</strong>. Reinforcement learning, i.e. learning from rewards of actions, has applications within advertising, content optimisation, dynamic pricing, and much more. Providing a managed reinforcement learning solutions based on common RL algorithms (Policy Gradients, Q-networks etc.) would really set AWS apart from the competition.</li>\n<li><strong>Building own specialised models on top of Rekognition. </strong>Currently as a developer, you are limited to the models built inside Rekognition for image recognition problems, which may require in many cases to set up your own image recognition solution. The addition of transfer learning, i.e. adding model detail information on top of Rekognition would dissolve that need (i.e. Rekognition recognises that the object is a car but your transfer learning model trains it further to identify different brands of cars)</li>\n<li><strong>MXNet / Tensorflow training and endpoint as a service</strong>. Set your data source (S3, RDS, Redshift, …), set your model parameters and get a model for use either in your own AI application or create a serverless REST endpoint for use by your apps.</li>\n<li><strong>Finnish language support for Lex & Polly. </strong>This will just not fly in Finland before this is available.</li>\n<li><strong>Support for free text (AMAZON.LITERAL) in Lex</strong>. Sometimes the answer you need to capture cannot be captured in a list. Lex should support interpreting open ended intents (just like Alexa does) or at least have the option to record speech inputs to be interpreted by a human.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>User Identity Management</h2>\n<p>Cognito User Pools streamline the development experience for building user management into web applications. Some additions could make the service even more powerful especially in the domain of compliance.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>GDPR Compliance</strong>. Built in features to support the functionality defined in the GDPR “Rights of the User” (access, rectification, erasure) together with best practices and some formal statement of compliance would ease development of GDPR compliant solutions that manage personal user information using Cognito.</li>\n<li><strong>User pool import / export. </strong>Sometimes you need to rebuild your user database or e.g. transfer it to a new AWS region. The ability to export and import user pool databases (including hashed passwords) would ease in that task.</li>\n<li><strong>Facial recognition. </strong>In addition to the textual metadata that can be managed within Cognito User Pools, it would be awesome to have the ability to store the facial metadata of customers inside the Cognito pool and lookup for users using a picture (e.g. recognize a user at a physical service desk / cash registry).</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Debugging</h2>\n<p>Cloudwatch collects metrics and logs for your AWS services, but especially in the scenario of serverless applications (a lot of log groups and streams) finding a specific error that has caused a Cloudwatch alert without any 3rd party logging solutions may feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. These small additions would improve the developer experience for basic developer scenarios:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Search CloudWatch logs. </b>You know when your error happened but not exactly which function triggered the alarm (you do not want to set alarms for every single Lambda function). The ability to search for log entries in a given time range with some keywords (‘e.g. Error / TransactionId’) would ease the task.</li>\n<li><strong>Link from CloudWatch metrics to logs</strong>. … and remove the task of a developer needing to search for the error message based on the metric data. A direct link from the Cloudwatch metric to corresponding log events would just rock!</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Meet us at Re:Invent</h2>\n<p>I’ll be participating Re:Invent with colleagues from Nordcloud. If you are also there and interested in a discussion about leveraging the AWS cloud for digital innovation and serverless technologies, send me an email (mikael.puittinen at sc5.io) or a Twitter message (at mpuittinen). Let’s meet up at Re:Invent!</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/our-reinvent-2017-wish-list/\">Our Re:Invent 2017 Wish List</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "The Computer Says: No.", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/the-computer-says-no/", | |
| "pubDate": "Fri, 10 Nov 2017 11:32:06 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "Topias Uotila" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Business" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Design" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Machine Learning" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10431" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>The challenges with artificial intelligence are not about math. Every article advising you about what is machine learning, deep learning or artificial intelligence tends to emphasize how much math is needed for building these algorithms. Sure, it is university level math that is required, but when a company looks to apply these technologies the math … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/the-computer-says-no/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/the-computer-says-no/\">The Computer Says: No.</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<h3>The challenges with artificial intelligence are not about math.</h3>\n<p>Every article advising you about what is machine learning, deep learning or artificial intelligence tends to emphasize how <a href=\"https://hackernoon.com/learning-ai-if-you-suck-at-math-8bdfb4b79037\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">much </a><a href=\"https://blog.networks.nokia.com/innovation/2017/11/09/study-ai-machine-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">math </a>is needed for building these algorithms. Sure, it is university level math that is required, but when a company looks to apply these technologies the math is never the problem. Many of the really hard problems like natural language processing (NLP) or computer vision (CV) are <a href=\"https://www.slideshare.net/sc5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">solved with existing cloud components</a>, so no math is involved. On the other hand, the custom-built algorithms for linear or logistic regression and neural networks are quite straightforward for an expert and require no novel mathematical wizardry from case to case or company to company.</p>\n<p>The difficulty is neither with the data. <a href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3307431/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Surprisingly small amounts of data can be used for initial teaching</a> and verification and business case calculation for a new application. Additionally, many problems can utilize <a href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603501/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-reinforcement-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reinforced learning</a> where most of the learning happens after the algorithm is put into production.</p>\n<h3>So what is the challenge then? The challenge is the people and the solution is design.</h3>\n<p>Design intersects with AI on multiple levels. Trivially there’s of course the design of the algorithm and its implementation. Then there is <a href=\"https://sc5.io/cases/veikkaus-personalization/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">using AI for design</a>, which is quite <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/future-of-designer-and-ai-in-peace-and-harmony/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">another topic</a>.</p>\n<p>Remember when the <a href=\"https://www.wired.com/insights/2015/01/will-machines-replace-us-or-work-with-us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">experts realized AI is not going to replace jobs and persons, but to augment them</a>? It’s not robot or human. It’s both. And these are the questions solved today.</p>\n<p><img class=\"size-full wp-image-10442 aligncenter\" src=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Capture.png\" alt=\"Robot and human\" width=\"176\" height=\"55\" /></p>\n<p>On the first abstraction level, we can ask how do we design services that utilize AI? And how can we design a new role for a person, whose job is being augmented by AI? We need to think of ways the user interacts with the machine and <a href=\"https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/how-algorithms-and-authoritarianism-created-a-corporate-nightmare-at-united-92d9bbdf1144\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how trust in the decision making of each party is conveyed between them</a>. It isn’t enough that an algorithm outputs a recommendation. Depending on who needs to act on that recommendation, a very different kind of communication on the grounds for that decision need to be conveyed. We need to be careful of both over and under relying on the machine. At the concrete level, it’s about showing all the alternatives and not just the best option, showing confidence intervals, spelling out reasoning, using colors, graphs and so on.</p>\n<p>But it gets more interesting when we zoom out. Since it’s a learning algorithm, it can also learn to use the best method of communication with the current user. It should also learn how much this particular user needs help. Is it a good idea to present the user with a proposal all the time or only when the confidence level and criticality of the decision are very high. We get an algorithm that learns to automate the optimal amount of the work.</p>\n<p>Next, let’s think about how every job has many kinds of activities. We can often apply AI to multiple of these and if each of the algorithms adjusts themselves as described above, we are effectively using a multi-algorithm AI to learn which parts of the current user’s job should be automated with AI. Very meta-level AI and design implementation.</p>\n<p>What happens at the company level when individuals and their jobs are thus augmented? The AIs get personalized and each persons’ job gets automated based on their strengths and weaknesses. We get a huge boost in role – person match and the jobs inside the company start to be unique. This will require totally different kind of leadership and HR.</p>\n<p>These changes to the way people and organizations work can’t be solved by mathematicians and machine learning experts alone. Solid world-class design is the key ingredient.</p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/the-computer-says-no/\">The Computer Says: No.</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Alma Talent’s Machine Learning Seminar — A Summary of SC5’s Talks", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/alma-talents-machine-learning-seminar-a-summary-of-sc5s-talks/", | |
| "pubDate": "Tue, 17 Oct 2017 13:43:56 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "SC5" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Data Science" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Design" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Machine Learning" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "AI" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10421" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>Last week, our Data Science Specialist Max Pagels and Data-driven Design Specialist Lassi A. Liikkanen shared their experiences with machine learning at the Alma Talent Machine Learning event in Helsinki. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s what they discussed. Just presented my story of designing #ai #MachineLearning digital services at @EventsFinland #koneoppiminen @THUotila … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/alma-talents-machine-learning-seminar-a-summary-of-sc5s-talks/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/alma-talents-machine-learning-seminar-a-summary-of-sc5s-talks/\">Alma Talent’s Machine Learning Seminar — A Summary of SC5’s Talks</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<p>Last week, our Data Science Specialist <b>Max Pagels</b> and Data-driven Design Specialist <b>Lassi A. Liikkanen</b> shared their experiences with machine learning at the Alma Talent Machine Learning event in Helsinki. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s what they discussed.</p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Just presented my story of designing <a href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/ai?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ai</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/MachineLearning?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#MachineLearning</a> digital services at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/EventsFinland?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@EventsFinland</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/koneoppiminen?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#koneoppiminen</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/THUotila?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@THUotila</a> <a href=\"https://t.co/NeMTzyYacK\">pic.twitter.com/NeMTzyYacK</a></p>\n<p>— Lassi A Liikkanen (@lassial) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/lassial/status/917722965671849984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 10, 2017</a></p></blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"></script></p>\n<h2>Machine Learning using cloud services</h2>\n<p>Leveraging the AI/machine learning services provided by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud was the focus of Max’s talk and demo. AWS and Google Cloud provide a host of fully managed, ready-made AI services, but also hybrid approaches where one can train and serve custom machine learning models. ML models require some pretty hefty hardware to train in a reasonable amount of time — cloud compute helps you iterate faster, and more cost-efficiently compared to on-premise solutions. In his talk, Max demonstrated how easy it is to get up and running by making a multi-class classification model using AWS Machine Learning and Google Cloud Machine Learning engine (TensorFlow), respectively.</p>\n<p>Cloud vendors are betting heavily on AI, and their offerings — although overlapping — have their pros and cons. The slides from Max’s talk, including a comparison matrix, can be found on SlideShare:</p>\n<p><iframe style=\"border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;\" src=\"//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/INEeKeSkkgI4sI\" width=\"595\" height=\"485\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"> </iframe></p>\n<h2>The impact of ML on interaction design and user interfaces</h2>\n<p>The impact of AI and ML on digital service user experience and interaction designers’ work was the focus of Lassi’s talk. The talk presented three themes Lassi has explored before around the applications of machine learning and the design patterns required to support new kind of digital services. In addition, Lassi discussed how natural interfaces, whether speech, gesture or gaze-driven, pave the way towards collaboration of humans and intelligent systems.</p>\n<p>The new development here is that machine learning allows the creation of interfaces that can understand user more quickly or totally transform how certain rather complicated tasks are carried out. The example Lassi highlighted was from collaborative robotics, a new domain pioneered by Rethink Robotics, an American intelligent industrial robots company founded by former MIT Robotics professor Rodney Brooks.</p>\n<p>The <b>two revolutionary ideas</b> for interaction design embedded in Rethink Robotics products relate to human-robot collaboration and their configuration. These features are in response to a problem created by traditional black box design of industrial robot intelligence. The old-fashioned approach was to program robots with great effort and detail. The robot programming was an expertise of itself and factory floor workers knew little how the robot was programmed or what it was doing.</p>\n<div class=\"entry-content-asset\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/-kiq2onigm4?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://sc5.io\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>\n<p>The first idea of collaborative robots is to<b> teach them in a “natural” way</b>, by manually guiding their “hands” and “fingers” through three-dimensional space, without writing a line of code. The second is to<b> reveal the thoughts, or intentions, of the robot </b>with a display mimicking a human face. The gaze of the robot, totally dysfunctional for the machine, allows human workers to get a sense of meaning and predict its actions. That’s also a natural way to do things.</p>\n<p>This is why collaborative robots make such a great example for the future of designer-AI collaboration in the future. We will be working with artificial narrow intelligence applications to get our stuff done more quickly.</p>\n<p><em>Want to learn more? SC5 offers on-premise trainings in machine learning & data-driven design — just reach out and ask!</em></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/alma-talents-machine-learning-seminar-a-summary-of-sc5s-talks/\">Alma Talent’s Machine Learning Seminar — A Summary of SC5’s Talks</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Your Internet Store Knows You Now – And Other Lessons from Data-Driven Design Day 2017", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/lessons-from-data-driven-design-day-2017/", | |
| "pubDate": "Fri, 29 Sep 2017 10:45:38 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "Lassi A. Liikkanen" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Business" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Data Science" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Design" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "data-driven design" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "data-driven organization" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10412" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>Data-Driven Design Day 2017 with Helsinki Design Week took place on Tuesday 12th September. Sponsored by SC5 and OP Group, the event attracted over 230 people to Valkoinen Sali in the heart of Helsinki and had close to 600 remote viewers. Attendees home and abroad enjoyed learning experiences most focused on data-driven development of ecommerce … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/lessons-from-data-driven-design-day-2017/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/lessons-from-data-driven-design-day-2017/\">Your Internet Store Knows You Now – And Other Lessons from Data-Driven Design Day 2017</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<p><i>Data-Driven Design Day 2017 with Helsinki Design Week took place on Tuesday 12th September. Sponsored by SC5 and OP Group, the event attracted over 230 people to Valkoinen Sali in the heart of Helsinki and had close to 600 remote viewers. Attendees home and abroad enjoyed learning experiences most focused on data-driven development of ecommerce and retail. Here’s how I see the day’s highlights.</i></p>\n<h2>Preface: What is data-driven design?</h2>\n<p>I have had several shots at defining data-driven design over the years. I have always started from evidence-based design, maintaining that design decisions must be rooted in objective data instead of gut feeling of the highest paid person in the room. In 2016, I compared data-driven design to growth hacking and conversion optimization. This contrasting highlighted that data-driven design is differentiated by method, goals, and ethics from its peers. Often times methods across three approaches are shared, but mindsets rarely so.</p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10413\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img class=\"wp-image-10413 size-large\" src=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/DDDD-comparing-growth-hacking-convopt-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/DDDD-comparing-growth-hacking-convopt-1024x576.png 1024w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/DDDD-comparing-growth-hacking-convopt-300x169.png 300w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/DDDD-comparing-growth-hacking-convopt-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Data-driven design approach and methodologically similar approaches in marketing and business</figcaption></figure>\n<p>In my <a href=\"http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3121355\">ACM Interactions article </a>published in 2017, I redefined data-driven design in the light of emerging new domains of design which also heavily rely on data. These new approaches are known as algorithmic or generative design and involve variations of assistive or agentive design technologies (instances of artificial intelligence).</p>\n<p>My latest proposal states that data-driven design is about scalable, automated data acquisition and analysis for design research. This makes two important claims. First, design in this fashion is human-agents-first approach, AI does not play a significant role in making design proposal. Second, decision making is still gated by human, not by silicon brains. This is the reflection of reality.</p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10414\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img class=\"wp-image-10414 size-large\" src=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/170912-DDDD2017-Intro-Lassi-Liikkanen-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/170912-DDDD2017-Intro-Lassi-Liikkanen-1024x576.png 1024w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/170912-DDDD2017-Intro-Lassi-Liikkanen-300x169.png 300w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/170912-DDDD2017-Intro-Lassi-Liikkanen-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">My latest definition of data-driven design</figcaption></figure>\n<p>I do think that this state of data-driven design, which you may call “Data-Driven Design 1.0” will gradually fade with first decision making being automated. This is because it is easier of the two and because it is already happening. For instance, <a href=\"http://robotics.stanford.edu/~ronnyk/\"><strong>Ronny Kohavi </strong></a>of Microsoft has publicly recorded many details of how big companies run their experimental platforms that include automated decision rules to help to weed out experiment ideas that perform below expectations.</p>\n<p>Professor <strong>Antti Oulasvirta </strong>from Aalto University talked about the future of generative design. He thinks that evaluation and generation are the biggest bottlenecks in present day design process. And he also believes that self-designing interfaces will eventually design themselves. To succeed, computational design will need to solve three major challenges: inference, search and prediction. Computational “design” thinking means that computers will learn to find their own solution from the design space and predict their value using models of human thinking and behaviour. This will lead up to “Data-driven design 2.0” if you will.</p>\n<h2>What happened at DDDD2017?</h2>\n<p>The theme of 2017 event was <i>retail and ecommerce</i>. My intention was to cater a good overview to this theme by inviting leading Finnish companies that help others do ecommerce (<b>Frosmo and Nosto</b>) as well as a new agency focusing solely on ecommerce (<b>Columbia Road</b>) to the event. Naturally the biggest of their kind from ecommerce (<b>Veikkaus</b>) and retail (<b>Kesko</b>) were also displayed. To keep the program interesting to people outside sales-transactions oriented world, two keynotes discussed the future of design and data (<b>Antti Oulasvirta</b>), and how data helps to find problems and verify problems in a digital company with several product lines (Mail.Ru).</p>\n<p> </p>\n<div class=\"entry-content-asset\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/xvqlE5kd81U?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://sc5.io\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>\n<p> </p>\n<p>The video recordings of the talks are now available with the exception of Antti Oulasvirta’s talk. I will describe in brief the major themes next. If you are interested in generative design, user interfaces that will design themselves, please contact me or Oulasvirta by email to receive more information!</p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https://twitter.com/hashtag/dddd2017?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#dddd2017</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/oulasvirta?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@oulasvirta</a> just displayed 3BRAINS and the reality of Brains-Driven Design … Leading up to DDDD2. 0 <a href=\"https://t.co/fPFeLD7R9g\">pic.twitter.com/fPFeLD7R9g</a></p>\n<p>— Lassi A Liikkanen (@lassial) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/lassial/status/907553867679793152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 12, 2017</a></p></blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"></script></p>\n<p>Across the presentations I believe the main repeating theme was that of <b>getting to know the user through data and acting upon it</b>. This leads to two directions.</p>\n<p>First, the picture of customers and users gets more detailed, finer grained and realistic. Designers can benefit from this at every instance. Less guesswork, fewer prototype or bullshit personas, more information. However, more of something is not just automatically better. <b>Jussi Mantere</b> illustrated how Kesko had worked hard to make loads of information more accessible to store managers by creating visualization of several kinds.</p>\n<p>Second, technical solutions afford personalizing experiences in electronic commerce. This needs human design to begin with, but the solutions displayed by Veikkaus and Nosto all show that once the wheels are set in motion, the digital solution can effectively serve customers personally. Let’s dig a bit deeper into this.</p>\n<h2>Ecommerce is now personal</h2>\n<p>Personalization was one of the repeating themes across several presentations. This should not surprise anyone, as <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/four-ui-design-guidelines-for-solutions-of-machine-learning/\">personalization is one of the emerging trends</a> in utilizing machine learning in interaction systems. However, the implementations of personal services were increasingly variable, as they occur in several forms.</p>\n<p>And why not, large behavioural data that internet merchants have an access to is ideally suited for customization. It only takes some learning solutions that can accommodate variable user needs and behaviours without much intervention of the user.</p>\n<p>When I look at the Finnish landscape of digital services and different customers for instance which SC5 serves, the <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/data-maturity-model/\">data maturity of organizations</a> is greatly variable. Even in terms of only knowing what their customers and users are up to and ranging up to companies such as Veikkaus or Supercell, which master user data and shape their products around it.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<div class=\"entry-content-asset\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/hRneXZ0yvFM?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://sc5.io\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>\n<p> </p>\n<p>I warmly recommend everyone to watch <b>Eetu Paloheimo</b>’s talk which describes about five years of efforts at Veikkaus leading up to a tailored personalization solution. The path included several technologies, for example, Conductrics. Today their personalized AI solution is responsible for over a third of sales at Veikkaus.fi. I think this is a great case study of how you develop new requirements and can observe new benefits by experimenting with relatively simple solutions at first.</p>\n<blockquote><p>50% of decisions could be made by Conductrics</p></blockquote>\n<p>In post scriptum, you may ask, doesn’t all this personalization go against the definition of DDD mentioned earlier, algorithms defining your experience? Not exactly. Someone still has to outline what the personalized service will be like, the bounds of variation. That someone is a human designer who together with various software tinkerers sets the bounds for what will happen. Personalization currently still happens within pretty strict constraints of <b>content.</b></p>\n<p><i>These were just few of the highlights of the Data-Driven Design Day 2017, go and watch the recorded streams (note attached PDF’s when available, mentioned in the comments) and learn for yourself</i>!</p>\n<p>Find the history of all past Data-Driven Design Day events here: <a href=\"http://datadrivendesignday.wordpress.com\">datadrivendesignday.wordpress.com</a></p>\n<p>You can also find the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNqx9rM5Kv1IS6uznb-gkTf7Niv-SXDHL</p>\n<p><strong>Text</strong>: Lassi A. Liikkanen, Data-Driven Design Specialist at SC5, <a href=\"http://twitter.com/lassial\">@lassial</a></p>\n<p><strong>Featured photo</strong>: Mikko Rajala, SC5.</p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/lessons-from-data-driven-design-day-2017/\">Your Internet Store Knows You Now – And Other Lessons from Data-Driven Design Day 2017</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Nordcloudista ja SC5:stä Euroopan johtava pilvinatiivien IT-palvelujen tarjoaja", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/nordcloudista-ja-sc5sta-euroopan-johtava-pilvinatiivien-it-palvelujen-tarjoaja/", | |
| "pubDate": "Tue, 26 Sep 2017 03:40:44 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "SC5" | |
| }, | |
| "category": { | |
| "__cdata": "Business" | |
| }, | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10384" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>Eurooppalainen pilvipalvelu-integraattori Nordcloud ja suomalainen pilvinatiivien sovellusten kehittäjä ja palvelumuotoilija SC5 yhdistyvät. SC5 muuttuu Nordcloud Solutionsiksi tammikuun 2018 alusta lähtien. Yhdistymisen jälkeen uusi Nordcloud pystyy tarjoamaan entistä kattavampia palveluja asiakkailleen. “Näemme, että Nordcloudin ja SC5:n voimien yhdistäminen auttaa meitä palvelemaan asiakkaitamme aiempaa paremmin. Yhä useammat yritykset ovat valmiita seuraavaan suureen muutokseen: viemään järjestelmänsä julkiseen pilveen … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/nordcloudista-ja-sc5sta-euroopan-johtava-pilvinatiivien-it-palvelujen-tarjoaja/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/nordcloudista-ja-sc5sta-euroopan-johtava-pilvinatiivien-it-palvelujen-tarjoaja/\">Nordcloudista ja SC5:stä Euroopan johtava pilvinatiivien IT-palvelujen tarjoaja</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Eurooppalainen pilvipalvelu-integraattori <a href=\"https://www.nordcloud.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nordcloud</a> ja suomalainen pilvinatiivien sovellusten kehittäjä ja palvelumuotoilija SC5 yhdistyvät. SC5 muuttuu Nordcloud Solutionsiksi tammikuun 2018 alusta lähtien. Yhdistymisen jälkeen uusi Nordcloud pystyy tarjoamaan entistä kattavampia palveluja asiakkailleen.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Näemme, että Nordcloudin ja SC5:n voimien yhdistäminen auttaa meitä palvelemaan asiakkaitamme aiempaa paremmin. Yhä useammat yritykset ovat valmiita seuraavaan suureen muutokseen: viemään järjestelmänsä julkiseen pilveen ja kehittämään sekä ylläpitämään niitä siellä. Onnistuakseen he tarvitsevat osaavan pilvinatiivien IT-palvelujen tarjoajan kumppanikseen. Nordcloudin ja SC5:n yhdistäessä osaamisensa, heillä on vierellään tällainen kumppani”, sanoo SC5 Online Oy:n toimitusjohtaja Matti Vesterinen.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tulevaisuudessa yritykset eivät ainoastaan siirrä prosessejaan ja -sovelluksiaan pilveen, vaan ne suunnittelevat koko liiketoimintansa pilvipohjaiseksi</span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. </span></i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yhdessä Nordcloud ja SC5 on luotettava kumppani eurooppalaisille yrityksille, jotka haluavat hyödyntää pilviteknologian tuomat kustannushyödyt ja nopean kehityssyklin.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Kun yritys on valinnut niin kutsutun pilvi ensin (cloud first) -strategian, kaikki sen uudet sovellukset toimivat pilvessä. Nordcloudin ja SC5:n yhdistymisen myötä voimme tukea yhä useampia asiakkaitamme IT-järjestelmien ja sovelluskehityksen muuttamisessa pilvipohjaisiksi nopeasti ja tehokkaasti. Palvelumme kattavat pilvi-infrastruktuurin ja palvelut sekä sovelluskehityksen ja voimme siten palvella asiakkaitamme kokonaisvaltaisessa muutoksessa: suunnittelusta käyttöönottoon, kehitykseen sekä ylläpitoon”, sanoo Nordcloud Oy:n toimitusjohtaja Esa Kinnunen.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SC5 tunnetaan korkealaatuisten pilvinatiivien sovellusten suunnittelusta, toteutuksesta sekä palvelumuotoilusta. Nordcloud puolestaan on erikoistunut suuren kokoluokan hankkeisiin, joissa kokonaiset IT-järjestelmät siirretään pilveen. Yhdessä Nordcloud ja SC5 tarjoavat kaikki pilvipalvelut IT-järjestelmien siirtämisestä ja operoinnista aina pilvinatiiviin sovelluskehittämiseen ja pilvisovellusten ylläpitoon saakka.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yhdessä yrityksillä on 250 pilviasiantuntijaa Suomessa, Ruotsissa, Tanskassa, Norjassa, Puolassa, Saksassa, Alankomaissa ja Englannissa, ja se tarjoaa täydet pilvi-integraatiopalvelut kansainvälisille yrityksille. Nordcloud on AWS Premier Consulting ja Managed Services -kumppani, Microsoft Azure Gold Cloud -kumppani sekä Googlen strateginen Cloud Platform -kumppani. SC5 on AWS Lambda-, DynamoDB- ja API Gateway ja Serverless Framework -kumppani. Aiemmin tänä vuonna Nordcloud pääsi Gartnerin arvostettuun maailmanlaajuiseen Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Managed Service Providers -nelikenttään**.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nordcloud on kasvanut yli 70% vuodessa viimeisen viiden vuoden ajan, ja se on yksi Euroopan nopeimmin kasvavia yrityksiä*. Myös pilvipalvelumarkkinan ennustetaan kasvavan lähes 250 miljardiin dollariin vuonna 2017** ja jopa 48 Fortune Global 50 -listan yrityksistä on julkaissut suunnitelmansa pilven käyttöönottamiseksi ***. </span></p>\n<hr />\n<p><strong>Lähteet:</strong></p>\n<p>* Deloitte EMEA 500 in 2016</p>\n<p>** Gartner, February 2017</p>\n<p>*** Bain and Company, January 2017</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><strong>Nordcloud Oy</strong></span></p>\n<p>Nordcloud on Euroopan johtavia pilvipalveluiden asiantuntijoita. Tarjoamme yritysasiakkaillemme pilvipalveluiden suunnittelu-, migraatio-, automaatio- ja managed services -palveluita sekä pilvikapasiteettia ja -koulutusta. Vuodesta 2012 alkaen olemme toteuttaneet satoja projekteja auttaaksemme asiakkaitamme ottamaan täyden hyödyn pilvipalveluista kustannustehokkaasti ja tietoturvallisesti.</p>\n<p>Nordcloud on AWS Premier Consulting ja Managed Services -kumppani, Microsoft Azure Gold Cloud -kumppani ja strateginen Google Cloud Platform -kumppani. Helsingissä sijaitsevan pääkonttorin lisäksi toimimme Salossa, Tukholmassa, Malmössä, Oslossa, Lontoossa, Münchenissa, Poznanissa ja Amsterdamissa. www.nordcloud.com</p>\n<p><strong>SC5 Online Oy</strong></p>\n<p>SC5 Online Oy on Helsingissä ja Jyväskylässä toimiva sadan hengen pilvipalveluiden ja digitaalisten palveluiden toimittaja. Yrityksemme rakentamia palveluita yhdistää uusimman teknologian tuomat kustannushyödyt, nopea palvelukehityssykli sekä näiden mahdollistamien uusien digitaalisten liiketoimintamallien tuominen suomalaisille yrityksille. SC5 on AWS Lambda-, DynamoDB- ja API Gateway ja Serverless Framework -kumppani. www.sc5.io</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/nordcloudista-ja-sc5sta-euroopan-johtava-pilvinatiivien-it-palvelujen-tarjoaja/\">Nordcloudista ja SC5:stä Euroopan johtava pilvinatiivien IT-palvelujen tarjoaja</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Expanding to create the leading cloud-born enabler in Europe", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/expanding-to-create-the-leading-cloud-born-enabler-in-europe/", | |
| "pubDate": "Tue, 26 Sep 2017 03:40:42 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "SC5" | |
| }, | |
| "category": { | |
| "__cdata": "Business" | |
| }, | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10380" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>SC5, Finland’s leading cloud-native development and design company joins Nordcloud in building Europes leading cloud enabler. SC5 will be renamed Nordcloud Solutions in January 2018. European cloud enabler Nordcloud has combined its previously independent cloud infrastructure and cloud application development businesses in order to provide full-service cloud transformations to its customers. With deep expertise in … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/expanding-to-create-the-leading-cloud-born-enabler-in-europe/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/expanding-to-create-the-leading-cloud-born-enabler-in-europe/\">Expanding to create the leading cloud-born enabler in Europe</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<div><em>SC5, Finland’s leading cloud-native development and design company joins Nordcloud in building Europes leading cloud enabler. SC5 will be renamed Nordcloud Solutions in January 2018.</em></div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">European cloud enabler Nordcloud has combined its previously independent cloud infrastructure and cloud application development businesses in order to provide full-service cloud transformations to its customers. With deep expertise in transforming enterprise IT operations to a cloud-first model, Nordcloud has seen more than 70% year-on-year growth for the past consecutive five years – making it one of the fastest growing companies in Europe*. </span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At a time when European enterprises are rapidly accelerating their cloud adoption, Nordcloud has become a trusted partner of choice for companies performing large-scale cloud transformations. Nordcloud specialises in both transferring its customers’ IT operations to the cloud </span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and</span></i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> transforming their IT application development into a cloud-first model.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“After an enterprise has adopted the cloud-first model, all their new applications will be cloud-powered. This is the driving force behind our decision to combine our businesses into Nordcloud,” said CEO Esa Kinnunen. “Now we can help even more of our customers move quickly and efficiently to a cloud-first model for both their IT operations and application development. We serve our customers all the way from design to implementation and maintenance of cloud infrastructure and services.”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With more than 250 cloud experts across Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, Nordcloud can offer the full range of cloud-integration services for any international enterprise. Nordcloud is an AWS Premier Consulting and Managed Services Partner, Microsoft Azure Gold Cloud Partner and strategic Google Cloud Platform Partner. In early 2017, Nordcloud was included in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Managed Service Providers, Worldwide.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the cloud services market is predicted to grow to almost USD 250 billion in 2017**, and with 48 of the Fortune Global 50 companies having announced cloud adoption plans***, Nordcloud expects to continue growing its IT services business substantially within the coming years. </span></p>\n<p><b>Sources:</b></p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">* Deloitte EMEA 500 in 2016</span></i></p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">** Gartner, February 2017</span></i></p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">*** Bain and Company, January 2017</span></i></p>\n<p> </p>\n<hr />\n<p><strong>Nordcloud</strong></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nordcloud is a European leader in public cloud infrastructure solutions and cloud-native application services. Since 2012 we have completed more than 300 deployments to help our enterprise customers gain the maximum benefits of the cloud, including security, agility, scalability and overall cost-savings. With more than 250 cloud experts across Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, Nordcloud can offer the full range of cloud-integration services for any international enterprise. Nordcloud is an AWS Premier and Managed Services Partner, Microsoft Azure Gold Cloud Partner, and strategic Google Cloud Platform Partner. </span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/expanding-to-create-the-leading-cloud-born-enabler-in-europe/\">Expanding to create the leading cloud-born enabler in Europe</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Getting the customer on the right track in a multi touchpoint world", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/getting-the-customer-on-the-right-track-in-a-multi-touchpoint-world/", | |
| "pubDate": "Wed, 20 Sep 2017 10:23:52 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "Lassi A. Liikkanen" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Business" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Design" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "loyalty" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "multichannel" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "service design" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10346" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>The Internet is an endless source of more and less information which tends influence many decisions we as consumers make. Research shows how major personal investments are preceded by months of Googling. Can companies somehow break away from traditional customer journey and jump to the loyalty phase of the life cycle without a tedious and … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/getting-the-customer-on-the-right-track-in-a-multi-touchpoint-world/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/getting-the-customer-on-the-right-track-in-a-multi-touchpoint-world/\">Getting the customer on the right track in a multi touchpoint world</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<p><em>The Internet is an endless source of more and less information which tends influence many decisions we as consumers make. Research shows how major personal investments are preceded by months of Googling. Can companies somehow break away from traditional customer journey and jump to the loyalty phase of the life cycle without a tedious and expensive fight in the early consideration phase? Some claim that this is possible, read and judge for yourself!</em></p>\n<hr />\n<p>Mobile internet, smartphones, Wikipedia, and numerous forums with customer reviews – not the least Amazon – have revolutionized information access for Western netizens. <b>Informational advantage, </b> which pre-internet age sales reps held over customers, is long gone. Every price quote, feature offering, or safety argument can be quickly double checked from the Internet with few taps.</p>\n<p>Current research about consumer behavior shows that 21st-century mobile-addicts are apt information scavengers. They seek, find, and digest information about their desired purchases continuously. Of course, what they find and see is affected by marketing messages. But overall, never before have the customers enjoyed so wide and deep access to peer-opinion, test reports, and heterogeneous product propaganda so effortlessly!</p>\n<p>My favorite data point here is a Facebook <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/iq/articles/the-road-to-purchase-in-a-mobile-first-world\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">commissioned study </a>in 2015 about how consumers go about buying a vehicle. The research revealed a complicated purchase cycle which involved some heavy googling along the long path to purchase. They demonstrated, for instance, how the certainty of different desired features of the vehicle steadily develops over time. Building from less than 50% of confidence several months ahead to a ⅔ confidence just a month prior to purchase.</p>\n<figure style=\"width: 750px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https://scontent-arn2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/17527985_203089750197717_5272958811320090624_n.png?oh=c7896e21b9d46898f92e2793e02767c4&oe=5A1F28DB\" width=\"750\" height=\"542\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Journey to car purchase spans up to twelve months in Facebook study</figcaption></figure>\n<p>The consequence of customers’ active research and consideration phase is that they are well informed of what they want to buy when they finally cross the divide from the digital to the physical world. According to<a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/iq/articles/under-the-hood-mobile-first-auto-consumers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> an FB research from 2016</a>, <strong>76</strong> <b>% of mobile-first auto consumers know the exact vehicle</b> they want to buy before visiting the dealer (see the full infographic <a href=\"https://scontent-arn2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/17365561_187260241793699_7125754801702305792_n.jpg?oh=13d86b75033eef4187a7416860ccc6af&oe=5A2D3D09\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here</a>). This means that upon the first physical contact, consumers will be difficult to persuade from their long-built commitment.</p>\n<p>Facebook report offers some suggestions on what companies can do to respond to smartphone-addicted consumers’ thirst for information, for instance, offering mobile-first websites and apps. However, some might argue that information approach is inherently doomed to fail. Let’s consider an alternative, a proactive takeover of the customer shopping journey. It starts by recounting what a customer journey can refer to.</p>\n<h2>Background: customer journeys and <i> customer journeys </i> in design</h2>\n<p>Customer journeys and customer life cycles are two well-known tools that service designers, among many, used to illustrate and manage the holistic customer experience. <a href=\"https://uxmastery.com/how-to-create-a-customer-journey-map/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Customer journey </a>map in a great detail the different stages of a journey on the way of achieving a specific goal, revealing design opportunities and service pitfalls during the journey. They are complemented by customer life cycles which represent a bird’s eye perspective of the full path that a customer and a brand go together across<i> several customer journeys</i>. See below how we at SC5 visualize them:</p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10339\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-10339\" src=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-Customer-life-cycle-300x211.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"211\" srcset=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-Customer-life-cycle-300x211.png 300w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-Customer-life-cycle-768x540.png 768w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-Customer-life-cycle-1024x720.png 1024w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-Customer-life-cycle.png 1146w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Customer lifecycle model from SC5 Design Toolkit</figcaption></figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10338\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-10338\" src=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-customer-journey-300x211.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"211\" srcset=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-customer-journey-300x211.png 300w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-customer-journey-768x540.png 768w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-customer-journey-1024x720.png 1024w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SC5-customer-journey.png 1149w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">SC5 Customer Journey template for tracking specific customer journeys</figcaption></figure>\n<p>If you don’t trust our vision it, there’s also the picture from a Gartner analyst <b>Hank Barnes</b> illustrates what usually goes into a customer lifecycle (or a buying cycle as Gartner also regards it). Life cycles commonly include the consideration period our American car buyers from FB study took their sweet time on. But some say it doesn’t need to be that way.</p>\n<p><img class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http://blogs.gartner.com/hank-barnes/files/2016/03/CustomerLifeCycle.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1373\" height=\"885\" /></p>\n<h2>Leading customers proactive with customer journeys</h2>\n<p>Two McKinsey consultants, <b>David C. Edelman </b>and <b>Marc Singer </b> have proposed a new meaning for customer journeys in <a href=\"https://hbr.org/2015/11/competing-on-customer-journeys\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an article appearing in Harvard Business Review</a>, November 2015. The authors take the consumer empowerment I described earlier as the starting point. They argue that companies must adopt a proactive approach to leading customers on the journey, rather than a passive, reactive approach they believe companies usually choose. This is based on the belief that carefully crafted customer journeys (their wording), or smooth customer experiences (my wording), <strong>w</strong><b>ill carry the customer smoothly over the consideration and evaluation phases</b> of the lifecycle to a happy customer relationship!</p>\n<p><img class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2015/10/R1511E_EDELMAN_STREAMLINING-1024x622.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"622\" /></p>\n<p><em>This is how Edelman and Singer redefine customer lifecycle</em></p>\n<p>Based on the vehicle acquisition example opening this article, this idea seems impossible! How can you possibly achieve that?</p>\n<p>Edelman and Singer argue the opposite and provide several examples in which the customer resistance, or need for considering alternatives, indeed seems to have vanished. I will not cite them (read them for yourself) but instead I will rephrase what they see underlying the success of brands such as<b> Sungevity</b>, <b> L’Oreal, </b> or <b> Nordstrom.</b></p>\n<h2>Four building blocks of a smooth journey</h2>\n<p>The authors claim that effective customer journeys and seamless customership is built upon four interconnected capabilities called automation, proactive personalization, contextual information, and journey innovation. I think they should read: <b> digitalization, personalization, context sensitivity, </b> and innovativeness<b></b>.</p>\n<p><b>Digitalization</b> embeds the idea of automation, enabling consumers to do things on their own, with their own devices, on their own time, without the need to consult any human aid, or even a machine that requires physical proximity (say, an ATM). This can save time, reduce time constraints, and reduce hassle, making products and services easier to use. It also means connecting the physical and digital seamlessly. <b>Personalization</b> is a no-brainer for anyone up to date with digital design. Bit of data about you and the services can adapt to your preferences and behaviors, just like the waiter at your regular restaurant does. I’ve <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/four-ui-design-guidelines-for-solutions-of-machine-learning/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">written about it as well</a>.</p>\n<p><b>Context sensitivity</b> is also a self-evident idea in the smartphone era. Your phone knows where you are, when you are, and with whom. Why shouldn’t this information be used to improve your experience? The fourth requirement, <b>innovation</b>, also stands out as obvious, you need to do things differently. However, in a critical glance, these building blocks are nothing new in the domain.</p>\n<h2>All hands on deck</h2>\n<p>The one point of divergence in Edelman & Singer story from what most digital design savvy people already know comes in how<b> a ‘journey managing’ organization is structured</b>. As the authors go on to redefine a SCRUM team (and break my heart), they add two important functions which agile software developers don’t usually consider in a SCRUM team. They are operations and<b> marketing</b>.</p>\n<p>In terms of managing the total customer experience (as I would rephrase their mission), it is clear that neither isolated digital teams nor independent brick-and-mortar shopping experience specialists can achieve the integration and management of the holistic, <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/designing-multi-touchpoint-user-experiences/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">omnichannel / multi-touchpoint</a> universe the customers have to deal with. Only by including stakeholders from operations, i.e. everything from supply chain to sales and customer service, and marketing who deal with much client communication, the great vision of guiding the customer to the right track may be realized.</p>\n<h2>Conclusions</h2>\n<p>I don’t buy the full story of Edelman and Singer. I see them mostly just coming up with new names for old things, which is an old management consulting honeypot. But I admit that among all “clever” repurposing of industry jargon, they have hit something meaningful <b>in the field of customer experience management. </b></p>\n<p>I can still recommend reading <a href=\"https://hbr.org/2015/11/competing-on-customer-journeys\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> their case studies </a> picked for the article in the spirit of “customer journeys”. As I see, their definition of customer journeys can be useful reminder for proactivity in customer relations as well as the need for carefully connecting the dots across the both worlds (virtual and physical) to achieve compelling customer experiences that generate loyalty.</p>\n<p>It is worth to remember that customers tend to be well informed and you need to embrace this fact in your all product and marketing decisions.</p>\n<p>SC5 helps crafting seamless customer journeys across the digital divide. <a href=\"/contact/\">Contact us</a> for ideas!</p>\n<p><strong>Text</strong>: Lassi A. Liikkanen, Data-Driven Design Specialist at SC5, <a href=\"http://twitter.com/lassial\">@lassial</a></p>\n<p><strong>Visuals</strong>: Laura Rantonen, SC5</p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/getting-the-customer-on-the-right-track-in-a-multi-touchpoint-world/\">Getting the customer on the right track in a multi touchpoint world</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Quantity breeds quality in the hit song industry", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/quantity-breeds-quality-in-the-hit-song-industry/", | |
| "pubDate": "Mon, 11 Sep 2017 06:45:28 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "Lassi A. Liikkanen" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Design" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Processes" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "creativity" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "design process" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "idea generation" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "ideas" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10327" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>The continuous stream of new pop music and artists makes it feel as if there’s some magical orchestra behind all of it. As music fans and pop consumers, we are usually pretty clueless as what kind of creative process goes into making music. Our expectations of making music usually come from ideas about isolated genius … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/quantity-breeds-quality-in-the-hit-song-industry/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/quantity-breeds-quality-in-the-hit-song-industry/\">Quantity breeds quality in the hit song industry</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<p>The continuous stream of new pop music and artists makes it feel as if there’s some magical orchestra behind all of it. As music fans and pop consumers, we are usually pretty clueless as what kind of creative process goes into making music. Our expectations of making music usually come from ideas about isolated genius music makers such as <strong>Michael Jackson</strong> or<strong> Kanye West</strong>.</p>\n<p>This is far from the truth. The modern way of creating hit music is far from artistic despair for inspiration. Instead, global hit factories keep international Top40 radio stations crowded by following a systematic production process which you might even call <strong>hit song engineering</strong>. This is how <strong>John Seabrook </strong>describes modern music business in his book <em>The Song Machine</em>, published in 2015. The book reached me a bit late but made a huge impression nevertheless.</p>\n<p>The way Seabrook describes the hit making process unavoidably reminds me of the <strong>classic engineering process</strong>. For background, I have to add that I did research for my Master’s thesis on how engineers split creative design problems into smaller, more manageable chunks in a process called decomposition. Based on this, I can’t help but to notice the similarities to the process of producing music. The work is split into smaller pieces and to more “engineers” than any person listening to a contemporary hit can fathom. And when I say engineers, I’m not referring to sound engineers, but writers and producers of many kinds that are required in the process.</p>\n<h2>HIStory of popular music production models</h2>\n<p>Most folks who’ve ever been into music probably are aware of the traditional model of music creation. In the adored <strong>singer/songwriter</strong> model, the blessed individual takes their precious time with an instrument, sometimes after considerable waiting for inspiration to hit them. Under divine inspiration, they compose music right from their soul. While this model still probably describes how scores of aspiring indie musicians work, the process of producing commercial the music people want to consume started around the same time when John Ford started his assembly line, in the late 19th century. In the US, a music production force is known as the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tin Pan Alley</a>.</p>\n<figure style=\"width: 381px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img src=\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Tinpanalley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"381\" height=\"450\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tin Pan Alley was a machine strongly identified with a physical location. Contemporary song machines lack a clear focus.</figcaption></figure>\n<p>Tin Pan Alley was responsible for much popular, hit music produced in the US until Second World War. Their key contribution was to introduce a <strong>melody-and-lyrics</strong> approach to music production. According to Seabrook, this meant that “<em>one writer sits at the piano, trying chords and singing possible melodies, wherein the other sketches the story and the rhymes.</em>” The work had thus been divided between two distinct professionals. This was adequate for the early 20th century, but the later part of the century brought forth a new breed of song creation.</p>\n<h2>The modern song machine</h2>\n<p>In a story that interestingly has many acts in Sweden, Seabrook explains the history of contemporary music and the rise of a totally new process. This prevalent method of 21st-century song writing is called <strong>track-and-hook</strong>. This production model calls for much finer grained musical specialization and usually involves several people doing the same thing.</p>\n<p>The basis for the song comes from the beats, chord progression, and the instrumentation (n.b. which can be freely copied from other songs, because the copyright doesn’t apply to them). They are created by <strong>producers or track makers</strong>. On top of this foundation, <strong>writer/topliner</strong> creates melodies and lyrics. Thus single song takes input from number of specialists who focus on verse, hooks, bridges, and lyrics – all of which must eventually come together seamlessly on the Pro Tools software of the mysterious star producer.</p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10355\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img class=\"wp-image-10355 size-large\" src=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/protools-dock-web-lassial-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/protools-dock-web-lassial-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/protools-dock-web-lassial-300x169.jpg 300w, https://sc5.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/protools-dock-web-lassial-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Protools workstation example: Pro Tools workflow leaves old mixing tables gathering dust and focuses music magicians work to computer workstations.</figcaption></figure>\n<p>Some producers identify even more responsibles for a single song. Dr. Luke describes a roster of <i>“artists, producers, topliners, beatmakers, melody people, vibe people, and just lyric people</i>”. That’s a funky bunch of seven different types of professionals contributing to a single song!</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge too</em><br />\n-Jay Brow</p></blockquote>\n<p>These specializations are just a part of the total process. To create a single track for a top artist, such as <strong>Beyonce, Rihanna, </strong>or<strong> Justin Bieber</strong>, there are possibly hundreds of beats. Producers put together a bunch of backing tracks, and send them out around the world for <strong>up to fifty </strong>topliners to find the best matching melodies for their beats (or in the US-centric pop world, just around Manhattan). They are not necessarily looking for a single melody, but a few which can be used to construct the overall hit.</p>\n<p>The producer is thus the creative director of the process. The fact that computers are used to engineer the final sounds without a need to record any instrument by a session musician further streamlines the process. In fact, Seabrook mentions in an interview that he never saw a real instrument played in any of the studios he visited! The only human handled instrument is the <strong>voice of the artist </strong>and even that is subject to major tweaking in a digital workbench.</p>\n<blockquote><p>he never saw a real instrument played in any of the studios he visited!</p></blockquote>\n<p>Seabrook describes topliner’s work as fast-paced assembly line duty, in which no single track gets worked on for long. “<em>If inspiration doesn’t strike quickly, move on to the next track and begin a new.</em>” This method is very productive, providing an undisputable evidence for how <strong>quantity can breed quality </strong>in creative professions. <strong> </strong></p>\n<blockquote><p><em>It might require twenty tracks to yield one recordable song, but that’s an acceptable percentage</em></p></blockquote>\n<p>I see three prominent reasons why this production model works. First of all the process of randomly mixing tracks with melody makers provides a great <strong>chance for lucky collisions</strong>. Second, as Steve Jobs criticized focus groups, as well as described his own thinking, you <strong>don’t know if you like it before you see it</strong>. The rapid process of hewing out song drafts certainly provides many opportunities to experience what works and what doesn’t. Third, by establishing clear and ambitious goals (say a hundred ideas in a brainstorming hour, twenty new melodies a day), you <strong>can’t ruminate on any single failure or success for long</strong>. You must keep up the momentum and not waste your time on polishing a turd, as the saying goes.<br />\n<iframe src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/user/msqt/playlist/4Lg4kiNNmLaClZcTBbdWx5\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe><br />\n<i>Spotify playlist full of carefully engineered hit music.</i></p>\n<h2>Engineering is not all</h2>\n<p>Of course, in creative industries, there’s never a single <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/the-formula\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">formula</a> of success. We Finns can still evoke a trickle of pleasure by recalling how Finnish monster metal act Lordi did the impossible and won over the hearts of European pop music fans in 2007 with Hard Rock Hallelujah. This track definitely not followed any of the winning formulas that Swedish or Norwegian pop wizards had successfully applied in the competition over years (not only in their national entries). That is also why producers can quickly fade out of fashion. Regardless of the domain, consumers of creative produce, art, music, applications or physical gadgets, get tired quickly.</p>\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0;\"><iframe style=\"margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/gAh9NRGNhUU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"></iframe></div>\n<p>That is why quantity and quick delivery always wins. Not the best possible, but great right now. You may ask, <em>does this have anything to do with my professional domain? I’m not making tunes! </em>I think it does.</p>\n<p>But for one, you need to acknowledge where you are in your innovation process. Have you already accumulated enough ideas, but can’t validate or evaluate them appropriately? Maybe you’re just afraid to commit to any existing idea. Or maybe you truly lack the idea to push forward.</p>\n<p>People coming from traditional business background may consider songwriters lucky, as they need not to carry the weight of the legacy infrastructure. But they are constrained by the artist brand. Even thou the constraints are radically different from traditional product development and service design, the creative challenge of filling the blank pages is a notable one.</p>\n<h2>P.S.</h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One more thing. You may ask if this practice is so common, why haven’t you heard of it? Simply because the record industry wants to keep it behind the scenes. They want you to celebrate only the artists. Seabrook writes how songwriter <strong>Lauren Christy</strong> had committed an unforgivable sin of publicly stating authorship of <strong>Avril Lavigne</strong>‘s songs resulting in what he describes as a professional suicide. Think about this the next time you browse Spotify, the current money making machine of the big record companies. Without a cover sleeve containing credits, this digital simplification is a perfect medium for fabricating an artist image.</span></p>\n<p><em>Thanks to Ville Vokkolainen for recommending the book!</em></p>\n<p><strong>Text</strong> Lassi A Liikkanen, SC5<br />\n<strong>Featured illustration:</strong> Laura Rantonen, SC5</p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/quantity-breeds-quality-in-the-hit-song-industry/\">Quantity breeds quality in the hit song industry</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "title": "Best resources for aspiring chatbot owners from Paul Walsh", | |
| "link": "https://sc5.io/posts/best-resources-aspiring-chat-bot-owner-paul-walsh/", | |
| "pubDate": "Fri, 01 Sep 2017 11:49:35 +0000", | |
| "creator": { | |
| "__prefix": "dc", | |
| "__cdata": "Lassi A. Liikkanen" | |
| }, | |
| "category": [ | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Cloud" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Design" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "Development" | |
| }, | |
| { | |
| "__cdata": "chatbot" | |
| } | |
| ], | |
| "guid": { | |
| "_isPermaLink": "false", | |
| "__text": "https://sc5.io/?p=10348" | |
| }, | |
| "description": { | |
| "__cdata": "<p>I had the pleasure of attending a keynote and a round table discussion about chatbots, their development, design, frameworks and platforms hosted by Paul Walsh at YLE Beta Media robots day on 1st Sep 2017. Here are some useful references out of the discussion: Showcases Quartz – remarkable media robot : https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/quartzy-news-app/ Swelly – the decision … <a href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/best-resources-aspiring-chat-bot-owner-paul-walsh/\">Continued</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/best-resources-aspiring-chat-bot-owner-paul-walsh/\">Best resources for aspiring chatbot owners from Paul Walsh</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| }, | |
| "encoded": { | |
| "__prefix": "content", | |
| "__cdata": "<p>I had the pleasure of attending a keynote and a round table discussion about chatbots, their development, design, frameworks and platforms hosted by Paul Walsh at YLE Beta Media robots day on 1st Sep 2017.</p>\n<p>Here are some useful references out of the discussion:</p>\n<h3>Showcases</h3>\n<p>Quartz – remarkable media robot : <a href=\"https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/quartzy-news-app/\">https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/quartzy-news-app/</a></p>\n<p>Swelly – the decision making bot that made app redundant: <a href=\"https://www.swell.wtf/\">https://www.swell.wtf/</a></p>\n<p>Botlist.co a huge selection of bot instances: <a href=\"https://botlist.co/\">https://botlist.co/</a></p>\n<p>Chatbots showcase from Motion AI : <a href=\"http://bot.store/\">http://bot.store/</a></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://botanalytics.co/static/new_index/assets/img/bgr2.png\" /></p>\n<p>Picture: Botanalytics.co</p>\n<h3>Solutions</h3>\n<p>Botkit toolkit for building bots <a href=\"https://www.botkit.ai/\">https://www.botkit.ai/</a></p>\n<p>Motion AI platform <a href=\"https://www.motion.ai/\">https://www.motion.ai/</a></p>\n<p>Chatfuel solutions for FB bots <a href=\"https://chatfuel.com/\">https://chatfuel.com/</a></p>\n<h3>Bot analytics</h3>\n<p>Multi-platform bot analytics <a href=\"https://botanalytics.co/\">https://botanalytics.co/</a></p>\n<p>Multiple platform bot analytics <a href=\"https://www.dashbot.io/\">https://www.dashbot.io/</a></p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io/posts/best-resources-aspiring-chat-bot-owner-paul-walsh/\">Best resources for aspiring chatbot owners from Paul Walsh</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://sc5.io\">SC5</a>.</p>\n" | |
| } | |
| } | |
| ] | |
| } | |
| } | |
| } |
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment