Yesterday I walked into SEED School DC a – a public charter school in Southeast Washington D.C. – and I was immediately reminded of the tremendous difference terrific teachers and a positive school environment can have on students. This point became abundantly clear as dozens of kids entered the auditorium to celebrate the completion of the online digital literacy program that Neustar and EverFi are offering to schools around the country.

To make our digital literacy program a success, you not only need a first-rate program but also educators passionate in their desire to help students learn and students eager to take on new challenges. The SEED School DC has it all.

The evening was highlighted by the remarks of recently designated Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn who, as a long time champion of broadband adoption and digital literacy programs, inspired the kids to reach for the stars and reminded them that the business and educational tools available on the web create tremendous opportunities for those with the skills to navigate it well. And that utilizing the Internet in a responsible way is one of the most important skills to learn.

I am always struck by what the kids say they learn from the course. One student said how excited she was to learn how to develop a web page. Another student noted that he learned about the problems with cyber bullying and that he hoped to use that knowledge to prevent others from doing it. These are the leaders of tomorrow and they give me tremendous hope for the future.

Kudos to all of the students at the SEED School DC who completed the digital literacy program and to the teachers and school administrators who have created an environment for learning and achievement that is clearly working.

SxSWedu

EverFi’s CEO Tom Davidson and Neustar’s Scott Deutchman at SxSWedu.

Neustar’s Scott Deutchman participated on a panel at this year’s SxSWedu conference in Austin, Texas with Tom Davidson, CEO of EverFi (our partner in bringing the My Digital Life program to schools in California, Kentucky and Virginia), and Jennie Niles, founder of the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, D.C.

Entitled STEM: Not Your Mother’s Digital Divide, the panelists spoke to the importance of public-private partnerships in connecting our children’s access to technology and the power of that technology to spark the imagination. These partnerships can inspire our children and expose them to technology fields they may never have considered before. In so doing, we can build a pipeline of professionals ready for the job market.

“Neustar, which sits at the center of a very complex technical ecosystem is only as dependable and reliable as the people who build it, run it and improve it. This understanding has led us to believe it is vital for Neustar to play a role in promoting STEM education in schools,” Deutchman said. “Given the enormity of the challenge, we have a responsibility to work with educators, policymakers, and communities to improve and expand STEM education, and to help increase the number of Americans choosing to pursue careers in technology.”

SxSWedu, an education-focused spinoff of the larger SxSW festival in Austin, Texas, attracts educators, policy makers, edtech startups, and others to meet to discuss the future of education. It’s a fantastic venue to discuss education issues facing the country. But it’s also important to have these discussions locally.

The Uncommon Alliance: Women in STEM Conference

Lisa Hook welcomes attendees to the Uncommon Alliance Conference.

In our own backyard, we are participating in The Uncommon Alliance: Women in STEM, a conference being hosted jointly by Georgetown Day School and E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, a high-performing public charter school dedicated to educational rigor around science and math.  The conference is designed to bring students, teachers, policy-makers and advocates together to discuss  ways to better support and attract  girls interested in STEM. Neustar CEO and President Lisa Hook, Chief Privacy Officer Becky Burr and technologist Angela Morrison will participate.

“It’s clear that exposure to these subjects must come at an early age in order to get students excited about math and science. We have to foster that interest throughout middle and high school. Our students—and especially girls— need to feel confident that they can have successful careers in these fields,“ said Lisa Hook.

At Neustar, we believe that we have a responsibility to work directly with students in the communities in which we work and live to help expand opportunities in technology and help increase the number of students who choose careers in this field. If we can take have that discussion on  the national stage, then all the better.

The students successfully completed the program’s seven technology modules which tackle digital literacy through a “building blocks” approach, first teaching students the essentials of technology–from how to choose a computer to how a network functions–before moving on to topics such as social networks, careers in technology, and digital responsibility.

We invited employees in our Northern Virginia offices to attend, speak or help hand out certificates.  Christine Dellecave, a Sterling-based employee who attended the ceremony reported that seeing the kids’ excitement and hearing their appreciation for the program was the best part of attending. “So many kids came up to us afterwards to say a special ‘thank you.’ Now that’s a great testament to an effective learning program!”

Other employees in attendance agreed, including Sandy Sinden, an employee in corporate marketing who attended with camera in hand. “Everyone of them said I great it was and they really like it. They all thanked us for doing it for them. It was pretty amazing.”

Congratulations to all the students who completed the program!

I, along with Alexandria County Public Schools Superintendent Morton Sherman and EverFi CEO Tom Davidson, visited Francis C. Hammond Middle School in Alexandria, Va., to give the students certificates of completion and hear them share what they learned from this digital literacy program. Neustar makes the program – which teaches kids about technology and digital citizenship, and encourages them to consider careers in technology – available to every middle school in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  We also make it available to every middle school in Kentucky and California (two other states that Neustar calls home).

While the adults present, including me, spoke about the program – so did the kids.  And I am not embarrassed to admit the kids were the far more compelling speakers. They made it clear that they not only enjoyed the program, but they learned the lessons it was designed to teach.  All of the adults squirmed in their seats just a bit when one student described the program as “much better than school.”  But we also sat up a little straighter when one student after another explained clearly how the program taught them how to handle cyber-bullying, how intelligently to choose which technology to purchase, or how to use social media in a responsible way.  Given how mature and sophisticated they sounded, it was stunningly easy to forget that we were listening to kids in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

I focused on the part of the program that encourages interest in a technology career – pointing out that if they studied science, technology, engineering or math they could invent the next blockbuster video game, cool mobile app, or super-fast computer. Neustar has invested in My Digital Life because we hope to spark both a lifelong interest in technology and a clear understanding about how to use technology responsibly. I came away from the ceremony knowing Neustar had made a worthy investment.

Rep. James Moran (D-VA), whose district includes Alexandria, congratulated the students for participating in the program. A member of his staff, a graduate of Hammond Middle, also spoke and helped hand out certificates to the students.

“The Internet is an integral part of life for today’s younger generation—students use the web for everything: communicating with friends, doing their homework and applying for college,” Rep. Moran said in a statement. “Neustar’s My Digital Life program not only gives students a foundation for digital literacy, it teaches them at a young age how to use these resources wisely and responsibly.”

Morton Sherman, Alexandria County Public Schools Superintendent, summed up how we all feel about this program when he told the students:  “You understand digital citizenship and digital literacy and the importance of respecting one another online. Obviously, this program works.”

I couldn’t say it any better.

Exposing kids to the power of technology early may also have the added benefit of sparking their interest in careers in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM)—fields that desperately need qualified employees. There are roughly 3.3 million job openings in the U.S. today, and half of employers say they have a hard time finding qualified workers to hire, particularly in technical fields.

Even at Neustar, with offices in technology hotbeds like Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia, we have trouble finding qualified employees to fill our open technical positions. And as bad as it is now, the story looks like it will get even worse. For example, experts estimate that by 2018 there will be 1.4 million computing job openings in America, but only about 400,000 U.S. computing graduates to fill them.

The lack of STEM-educated graduates in America is a very real problem, particularly when you look at our global competitors. One assessment of student performance in math and science now ranks the U.S. 25th in math and 17th in science when compared to other countries around the world. Only one-quarter of America’s 52 million K-12 students are performing on par with the average student in Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Taiwan, or South Korea, while 25 percent of our high school students fail to graduate.

We need to get our kids excited about STEM. Kids need to be exposed to science, technology, engineering and math at an early age. We need to continue to foster that interest throughout middle and high school. If kids understand how the technology in their lives works and how to use it in positive ways, then maybe they’ll start thinking about pursuing careers in technology. If students understand the importance of privacy, security, and building better digital skills, we hope they will be interested in being part of improving today’s technology tools for tomorrow’s generation.

At Neustar, we want to take an active role in changing the future. That is why we are investing in My Digital Life.

Participating teachers, L to R: Nicole Kezmarsky, Loudoun County HS; Martin Schulz, Tuscarora HS; Nathalia Hardy Freedom HS; Mark Smaltz, Brentsville HS; Martha Somers, Broad Run HS.

Over the past few days, my Neustar colleagues and I have been fortunate to participate in George Washington University’s 2012 GW Teachers in Industry Project (GW TIP).

GW TIP’s mission is to provide middle and high school core content teachers with the opportunity to experience firsthand the work environment for which they are preparing their students.  We worked with a group of five primarily STEM-focused (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) high school teachers in a four-day externship at Neustar’s Sterling, VA campus.  During this time, the teachers spoke to and learned from Neustar employees and executives from various divisions of the company including Finance, Communications, Product Marketing, Engineering and Network Operations.  The teachers talked with and learned from employees across the company to understand the skills needed to be successful in their lines of business.

Rick Pearson, Neustar Director and member of Loudoun County Economic Development Commission, drove the program at Neustar.  I had the pleasure of working with Rick on this project and leading the GW TIP educators through their Neustar journey beginning with an introductory dialogue with CEO Lisa Hook.  With the goal of providing a holistic view of the company, the teachers were exposed to strategic insight, business processes, financial background and the cultural attributes required to make the company successful.

“I know the teachers were here to learn from us, but I think we learned as much or more from them,” said Rick. “Both sides found ties between education and the workplace that they were not expecting.”  For example, Rick said that both teams found common ground with the idea that perceived failures often provide a good learning opportunity in both the workplace and in the classroom. “People of any age need to accept failure and learn from it in order for innovation to be successful. That is a really hard concept to implement in the classroom, as well as in the workplace.”

In addition, during each session the teachers were provided with the speaker’s background, both educational and work-related, as well as the hard and soft skills required to create impact and drive value in their daily work lives.

One of the teachers provided the following feedback after the first day: “Today was WONDERFUL!! Neustar ran us around like they have been hosting teachers for years. At one point, another turned to me and said, “Oh, we totally got the cool externship, didn’t we?”

The project was a great opportunity for us to promote and support the importance of STEM education and to help prepare our next generation of business leaders for promising and successful careers.

Why?

It seems that the human brain adapts to remembering successes based on prior experiences and beliefs, and equally, is good at forgetting all the false suggestions. Consequently, I can safely predict some of the technological trends discussed at the IEEE Technology Time Machine, Symposium on Technologies Beyond 2020, held in Germany May 23-25^th, with the hope that at least one of them will materialize. If we’re lucky enough for that to happen, I fully expect you to laud my genius foretelling capabilities. I’ll be watching.

Symphony of Science – Everything is Connected

Vodafone, ALU, NSN and Actix discussed the Networks of the Future and chatted about how everything connects–from centric clouds, to machines, to peer-to-peer (P2P) micro networks acting autonomously and locally. The inevitable cloud featured different flavors of it (mobile clouds, intelligent clouds), leading into allowing raw APIs into the existing networks of all kinds.

P2P will evolve to short-range, local, contextually aware P2P networks to enable massive local computations and communications. At Neustar, we have a team working on ALTO and they are dealing with similar issues.  Our own Jon Peterson is not a Distinguished Engineer for nothing!

As always with the unknown future, the panel had to include a couple of assumptions, such as one of flat-fee, cheap broadband, even free one, to everyone and everything. It seems this commoditization of networking nodes will allow new players to enter and incumbents to grow their offering and to ‘Innovate or Die’. I’d rather innovate, seems healthier.

Networks and Rule of 10 – Everything will multiply x10

5G networks (and a variant called 4.5G, all past LTE which is 4G or Long Term Evolution) were presented with different perspectives. My favorite takeaways were the decimal predictions, for 10 years from now:

1. Available Data Rates x 10 (and probably more)
2. Users x 10 (more users but also more nodes per user)
3. Data per user x 10 and possibly more (numbers from last 5 years show world-wide x10)
4. Latency and real-time < 10ms to allow not only seamless audio and video, but tactile as well
5. 10+years of battery life without intervention to portable mobile devices (M2M and internet of things)
6. Overall  x1000 traffic (coming from x10 from more spectrum, x10 more base stations, and x10 efficiency per station)

We are always on the lookout to help our customers improve their services. Tapping into future networks, what is likely to affect most of the carriers, online enterprises, media providers and channels, and of course government agencies, allows us to anticipate and have a slight advantage of making our offering fit for the future and sometimes driving the future. To some of our sales people this is all they need – give them a slight advantage, an opening in the door, and they will make it happen. In the future as done now.

Safety is the new Risk – Security is the Battle Front

Security and privacy were addressed in almost every session, and of course had dedicated sessions as well. But I felt most explorations were in a “more of the same” approach, essentially projections of what goes today into the future, much like the x10 we discussed above. I suspect they missed the mark as this field, as in my limited view security is surely to yield purple swans (the ugly love child of Taleb’s black swan with Godin’s Purple Cows?).

This arena is buzzing on local and global scales, and is setting itself as the war zone, which means it’s likely to be filled with new methods of attack and defensive measures: from privacy to control of resources; back-end data; field generated data; logical and physical resilience of nodes; eavesdropping; accountability of the information; local, global, coordinated and autonomic threats; and auto-interjected faulty or corrupted information. It is safe to assume new kinds of attacks, on any element on the path of information, sometimes even on how it was generated, and some other times on the way it is being used once it got there “safely.”  Remove the world cyber from cyber security as there is just security. Perhaps add ‘legacy’ or non-cyber security to what will be left outside. Guards in front of buildings and TSA.

The good part is that we will probably see firsthand, as a nation and as a company, some of those new methods acted by us or upon us when the time comes. Well, good is used very liberally here, I admit.

Man and Machine – Factories of the Present Looking into the Future

Very lightweight car--still very, very fast.

The conference ended with an optional excursion to local industrious factories, taking advantage of the site. The first was ILK (TU Dresden Institute of Lightweight Engineering and Polymer Technology). We visited a live factory, and witnessed how extremely light polymers are created, weaved, heated – all in short time frames with accuracy to rival traditional metal or other materials. Machines are on the rise here.

The second excursion took us to a local Volkswagen Factory – reminding me of my first car, a beetle 1968 that was older than I was. Unexpectedly, for a huge car manufacturing facility, there were only three robots placed where extreme weights and forces required utmost precision in the assembly line. Each car is handmade and built to specific buyer specification, a pipeline that takes about four (!) days. So there is a place for people after all in this brave new world–genetically produced, of course.

Summary

Inside the Volkswagen Factory. Really.

Overall an inspiring conference, not very scary as an unknown future is often portrayed to be, and quite in line with what we observe today. To my personal liking, perhaps  too much in line. The future inevitably is going to pace itself to other directions as well.

So what have we got? A future envisioned for devices, networks and people becoming increasingly more connected, faster in pace, riskier to the naïve, but more efficient to the smart user. I’ll take that.

Certainly at Neustar, we are doing our best to connect everything and to drive value by putting knowledge and wisdom into the networks. And what will we do in the future, you ask? Better. Thanks for asking.

Arlen Butler, a Product Support Manager based in Louisville, Kentucky, attended the ceremony. I asked him about his experience on certification day.

Q:  Why did you volunteer to attend the ceremony today?
Arlen Butler: As the father of a 10-year-old, I recognize the potential risks our youth face today through their use of technology.  There must be a balance between exposing youth to technological benefits, while, at the same time, ensuring they are aware of these potential risks.  My Digital Life is a great tool to create and enhance this awareness. Because of the value of this program, I was happy to participate and represent Neustar.

Q: Why do you think it is important to promote digital citizenship programs in school?
AB: With the continued exponential growth of technology, coupled with the growth of a younger user base, we must continue to find ways to protect and inform our youth of the potential dangers, as well as the benefits of technology.  Along the way, we will enhance awareness and interest in technology.  With the current shortage of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math graduates, this program will hopefully spark more interest in technology that will stick as a desired area of study and vocation.

Q: What was the best part of the certification day at Mason County Intermediate School?
AB: My favorite part of the day was spending time with the students and hearing them express their appreciation and enjoyment of the program. There were even two students who stood up in front of their peers and shared the benefits of the program and what they had learned.  I also had several students walk up to me, shake my hand, and say, “Thanks, the program was great!”  They were not prompted to do so by anyone and I wasn’t even handing out the cupcakes!  When you have 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th grade students doing this, which was the case at Mason County Intermediate, you know we are part of a great program.

Congratulations to you all, and thank you, Arlen, for attending!

John Manning, a Loudoun County local who manages our North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA) organization, attended the ceremony. I asked him about his experience on certification day.

Q:  Why did you volunteer to attend the ceremony today?
John Manning:  As a parent of a sophomore at Stone Bridge High School, as well as a parent of two children that graduated from the school in 2005 and 2007, I have a stake in this academic program. My children have all benefited from the excellent instruction they received from the school so participating in the My Digital Life program and representing Neustar was a way to recognize all that the school has done for my family.

Q: Why do you think it is important to promote digital citizenship programs in school?
JM: The technology available to children at the middle and high school level is remarkable. These young people are very eager to use it, but with these technical capabilities comes significant responsibilities.  The sooner we can introduce and convey the responsibilities, the better prepared they will be to take full advantage of all that is available to them, in a safe and productive way.

Q: What was the best part of the certification day at Stone Bridge High School?
JM: It was exciting to be able to recognize these students, a good number of them I knew. Just as important, I had a great discussion with a small group of students who were very interested to learn about Neustar–what we do, how the company has evolved over the past 10-plus years, and why Neustar was involved in the My Digital Life program.

Congratulations to you all, and thank you John for attending!

I never believed in osmosis of thought, but after spending a week around some of the most brilliant minds in the interactive world, I’m hoping their innovation has rubbed off on me. As such, I want to share some of the more salient trends I noticed from the festival.

At the risk of neglecting my “SxSW Buzzword Bingo” card, I’ve winnowed down the 25 panels I attended to the following three key themes:

Storytelling & Humor

By far, the theme of storytelling dominated this year’s SxSW festival. Sixty-six different panels touched on storytelling from every conceivable angle, including content and journalism (obvious) to branding, design and marketing (not always so obvious.) All humans are interested in stories and from the two panels I saw, the point was to help attendees understand how to use this common experience to connect with users and customers in a new way.

On a related note, comedy and humor also dominated, with several keynotes and workshops dedicated to the topic. Baratunde Thurston, digital director of The Onion discussed, among other things, how satire and humor cuts through the chaos to help you make sense of the world. He didn’t make a direct connection to products or how we can craft corporate stories, but I think we can adapt his message to business. Sometimes humor, containing a little grain of truth and used alongside good storytelling, can go a long way in helping us connect with our target audience.

Listen to Does Your Product Have a Plot or The Power of Visual Storytelling. Baratunde’s keynote is also available, How to Read the World.

Big Data

Echoing larger industry trends, panels dedicated to Big Data showed up on the schedule in both the “Emerging” and the “New Business” tracks. The sheer volume of data, driven by new devices and disparate data sources, requires a shift in how businesses capture and analyze information. If you could mine the data generated by your audience, what questions might you ask? How would you do it? Twenty-two panels attempted to answer these questions and spanned every topic from privacy to human/machine data generation to making sense of it all.

Listen to Using Big Data Takes Machines & Humans and Big Data for Everyman: Help Liberate the Data Serf. Listen to Amber Case, Cyborg Anthropologist (by far the coolest title I saw all week,) who gave a fascinating keynote about the future of humanity and all the data we are creating: Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface.

Location, Location, Location

The ability of consumer electronics to sense location has opened the doors to new bundles of mobile services that include navigation, local search, and mobile advertising/marketing. Indeed, “location” was a hot topic this year with more than 50 panels using the keyword in either the title or the description. Between bettering location technology and privacy issues, there were panels on how to improve SoLoMo experiences for users to provide highly targeted, value-added and context-rich communications—the holy grail for all companies in this space. The panels varied widely on the business uses of location to the technicalities of coding for such uses. Location sessions were extremely popular and I believe this theme will return next year.

Glancee and Highlight, two location-based “people discovery” products were picked as front-runners to “win” SxSW this year. Not that I’m the model target user for this type of app, but I didn’t see or run into either at all. American Express partnered with FourSquare with a fantastic promotion allowing attendees to link their check-ins with $10-off specials. In my little group of five, we took full advantage of this and got some great restaurant deals. These types of services are bound to proliferate as we become more attached to our smartphones.

Listen to SoLoMo Redefined: Next Gen Social Local Mobile

Other buzzwords that made my bingo card: content curation, algorithm, social graph, aggregation, hyperlocal, copyright, gamification. We’ll see what next year holds for these themes.

The complete schedule is available and most of the bigger panels were recorded, so they’re available if you’re so inclined to listen. Most are 60 minutes. I’m curious. Did you go? What were your big takeaways?