Free Food to Become a Human Right

ON IT'S FACE, this article is about automating fruit picking.  But in reality, it's about the future.

Here's an interesting story: The government of Switzerland is considering passing a bill to pay every one of its citizens just for being alive.  This has some very interesting implications.
Submitted are three data points, and two predictions:

Data Point 1.  At the University of Sydney, a team is working hard to create a fully automated farm.  There have been many, many efforts at using robots to perform routine tasks on the farm, but none as sophisticated as this project. 

The first phase is the development of robots that can patrol orchards and gather data for a “comprehensive in-ground and out-of-ground model. Traditionally it has been necessary for someone to actually walk through the orchard, taking and analyzing soil and other samples and making decisions on the health and yield quality of the plants," said Sukkarieh. "The devices we've developed can collect, analyze and present this  information autonomously, so a major part of the farmer's job can be done automatically."

This year (2013), the team will start the second phase, which will see the technology applied to standard tractors to allow them to automatically carry out tasks like applying fertilizers and pesticides, watering, sweeping and mowing.

The third phase is to develop harvesting robots. "The devices we've developed already can identify each individual fruit on the tree and its degree of ripeness, which is about 80 percent of the job done. But being able to harvest them is our ultimate goal," he said.  Unwilling to make precise predictions, Sukkarieh says that phase 3 will be realized "in a few years".

Data Point 2.  Grape pruning, orange harvesting and apple picking through the use of multi-arm robots are being pioneered by Vision Robotics in San Diego. These guys are pretty advanced too, and are capitalized by a number of sources, including grants and investors.  They are keeping things pretty close to their vest and encourage folks to "check back frequently" and read their news page.

Data Point 3.  In the August 2012 issue of Fruit Grower, Geraldine Warner blogged that automated fruit pickers might be two years away.  Dr. Sanjiv Singh of Carnegie Mellon said that for the technology to become field acceptable (i.e. to farmers) it would need to be "affordable, robust, and technically feasible". The affordability factor has come down by a factor of ten.  The technical parts are coming together.  And the engineering will ensure that it's robust. Vision Robotics is also mentioned in this post.

There are many, many projects of this type underway around the world.  And we're not even covering the automated restaurant yet, and the impact that'll have on jobs.  It's going to happen. 

Prediction 1: in five years (some time in 2018) fully automated harvesting will begin to become mainstream.  Major commercial farmers will be using robots, eliminating millions of jobs.  In China, according to government statistics, there are 120 million migrant farmers.  There are probably three million in the United States.  Just as during the industrial revolution, the workforce will be shifting from relatively unskilled labor to highly specialized, technical labor.  Someone will have to maintain and support the robots!

Prediction 2: in ten years (2023) or sooner, governments will pass legislation which makes free, nutritious food a human right.  The production of crops will become so efficient and inexpensive as to make this economically possible. The only question is, will the first government to pass such a law be the United States, the United Nations, or a country in the European Union?  And check out an article in the WSJ from Suynday, February 24, 2013:  "Our jobless future may be more sustainable than we imagine."

What do you think?

A Life-Hack for your Job Search

I  recently helped a friend work on his resume.  He is a pretty senior businessman, and someone whom I admire greatly, so I really want to help.  You may be in the same position: lots of achievements, but how do you reflect them most effectively in your resume and in your online presence?  You want to stand out from the crowd, right?  You want your themes and work-personality to come through, right?

So I came up three different ideas, which, used in combination, have the potential to transform your resume.  Think of this as a lifehack for your job search.  Separately, you can find these thoughts in different places, but here they are in combination.



I'll call these ideas:

• Word Map your Resume
• Heat Map your Resume
• Life Hack your Resume

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Word Map Your Resume!  My first idea uses a popular software tool - the Word Map - why not put the content of the resume into a word-map tool to see what pops out.  You've seen the output of this genre of tools.  They take a bunch of text, and based on the number of times a word is used and its context, the word will be larger or smaller, and possibly a different color, and an artsy text-based graphic is produced.  Here's an example of the use of a popular online tool, Wordle, on today's Wall Street Journal article entitled "Markets Shrug at Shutdown Even as Debt Battle Looms", now in Day four:

• 
  
  A few things pop out at you.   After reading it, the main theme in the article is that investors and markets are somewhat unfazed by the shutdown.  The word map reflects the same thing: it doesn't show any sign of panic, right?  None of the words that might indicate trouble are big.  In fact, the word "calm" is larger than "threatens," and much larger than "Volatility" or "warnings".  So there are some great insights you can obtain from this distillation of the article.
  
  We're looking for similar insights into the resume.  Here's a version of my friend's resume word map.  What jumps out at you?  Marketing, market, product development, Million - all good words.  The resume as currently written is about a marketing/communications/product development person with Million dollar impact.  The problem is, those kinds of people are a dime-a-dozen.  The resume word map highlights his marketing skills, but not the leadership or team-building skills.  

This is an image of a "regular Joe" in marketing.

So, I'm thinking that if your main themes are about leadership and teamwork, and your resume pops out of the word map software like this, you may want to rewrite it to focus more on leadership and teamwork, so that those themes are more prevalent.  I'm betting that the automated tools that HR screeners use, perform a function like this in finding keywords (to determine traits and experience of candidates).  (HR types, chime in with your comments.)

So I modified the resume to place more emphasis on areas of strength.  Here is the result.  How about this: you could even make the word map the last (or first) page of your resume for additional impact.  I have consolidated some similar words to develop this simpler, more effective word map.

This image is of an executive leader in market strategy and execution.

 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Heat Map Your Resume!  My second idea was to use "heat maps" to discover what parts of your resume are being looked at most frequently.  This idea comes from Internet usage research.  People's eye movements are tracked to see what they are looking at on the screen - the idea here was to improve the user interface, so people see and act on what they want more easily - and it's been ported to many other businesses, including how consumers look at retail displays and advertising (which is why I thought of it).  The red areas are where the eye spends the most time; the yellow less, and the blue the least.  Clear areas aren't even looked at.  Here's a picture of how a recruiter looks at a resume in a matter of seconds:

It turns out that new study produced by The Ladders (from which these images are taken) offers insight into how recruiters (and resume readers of all types) look at your resume, by using heat maps.  The study team analyzed a couple of different versions of the same resumes and came up with some interesting insights you can use to edit your own resume.  The study can be found here.  Of course, you don't have access to this technology, but you can use the concept in redesigning (or having someone else redesign) your resume.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Life Hack Your Resume!  My third idea is borrowed from this great Ted Talk by Amy Webb, who lifehacked the online dating system to get the boyfriend (later husband) of her dreams.  The idea here is to tailor your online profile (i.e. LinkedIn) to attract the suitor of your dreams - make yourself more attractive to him/her.  Her approach involved creating a few fake profiles online, and experimenting with word counts and specific word choices, to see what works, and what doesn't with her target audience.  She created an algorithm - and you can, too!  You probably shouldn't create fake LinkedIn profiles or fake Monster.com jobs for people to post to, although that would achieve the same result that Amy got.  But you can certainly find people who have recently been hired into your ideal job - and analyze their online profiles (which successfully landed them the job) - then modify your resume and profile accordingly.  You could also reach out to them - I'm SURE they'd be happy to talk with you about their experience.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 




Of course, first, you have to figure out what you want to do with your life, which is an entirely different matter and subject for another post...


So there you have it - three tangible hacks to improve your job search. 

Good luck, and tell me what you think of these three ideas!

Flexible Displays and Retail ESL

What does the new wave of flexible display technology portend for retail?

Wow, check out CES 2013 and the roll-out of flexible displays by the big guys.  Queens University, Intel Labs and Paper Logic have teamed to develop a flexible-tablet-PC with a nearly 11 inch display, and have published this YouTube video of how e-paper apps might work with multiple sheets.

The implications continue to be enormous for retail.  Most prognosticators pooh-pooh these developments, repeating the mantra "it's always five years away from prime time".  That's what was said five years ago too.  However, those with more foresight are quietly working away to make these innovations a reality.

Take, for example, the flexible display team at Arizona State University.  One of my favorite organizations, the US Army, helped establish this unit back in 2004.  A concept they wanted to pursue was to provide field soldiers with an interactive, flexible display unit that could be 'worn' on a forearm - just like a football quarterback.  This device could be a reality in the near future; just check out ASU's Milestone's page. 

Also at CES, Samsung demo'd their version of a bendable display, in full color.  Most in retail believe that until ultra-thin, flat display technology can be made both cost effective and high resolution full color, it won't be ready for prime time.  I agree on both points, but the time is nigh for it to become a reality.




With major retailers testing multiple Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) technologies both in stores and in their innovation centers, it's only a matter of time before the technology compels widespread use.  Retailers are tired of paying, in some cases, many millions of dollars in printing and distribution costs for retail signage. 



ESL has taken off in Europe, where consumers aren't "trained" to look for the yellow shelf tag and where retailers don't put items on promotion nearly as frequently.  There, plain black-and-white ESL technology in a hard case, such as those by Altierre and ZBD, predominate.  These new flexible display technologies have the potential to leapfrog those providers in a hurry.

Prediction:  in short order (2-3 years at the most), we'll be seeing a ribbon of video and flexible display at the retail shelf-edge, (currently LED based 'ribbon board') just like you see at major sports venues.  Soon to follow will be near-field communication between the consumer's smart phone and the display, making compelling and relevant offers in real time.  Tell me what you think!