CyberConVA: Where CISOs and AI Took the Stage
RVA Tech hosted its annual CyberConVA on Feb 6 at the Dominion Energy Center in Richmond VA. Subtitled “Where CISOs take the stage,” the conference did indeed feature a roster of chief information security officers (CISOs). But also taking the stage was machine-learning (ML)-based generative (Gen)AI, the technology du jour. (Or de l’année? du siècle?) The CyberConVA opening keynoter was Carsten Krause, a tech exec affiliated with the CyberRisk Alliance and co-founder of CDO Times. Krause’s resume includes CISO, along with CIO and AI...
read moreFive Takeaways from TechExpo 2024
The SCTE held its annual conference and exhibition at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, September 24-26. It ended just as Hurricane Helene was slamming into Florida. That leads to a preliminary lesson: Check the weather. I hadn’t been following the news. It was only through exhibitors on the floor who were already talking on Day 2 about packing up that I realized Atlanta was in Helene’s path. We were lucky. I left midday on Day 3, taking MARTA to Hartsfield Airport. One step ahead of this monstrous storm that hit western North...
read moreThe Power and Threat of ChatGPT
After a year and a half of using the free version of ChatGPT, I signed up for a paid subscription. This paid version, ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), has been around since February 2023, when it was launched to provide paying subscribers with better performance and priority access to new features. But now seemed like a good time to take the plunge. Why so? One reason is that in September, OpenAI unveiled a new series of AI models “designed to spend more time thinking before they respond.” The company claimed this new series, named OpenAIo1, “can...
read moreLighthouse Labs Rolls Strikes
It’s nice to have a seed-stage business catalyst in town. On July 24, 2024, Richmond, Virginia-based Lighthouse Labs announced the 17th cohort of companies participating in its accelerator program. (I wrote about Lighthouse eight years ago in a post comparing Richmond and Silicon Valley.) On August 27, Lighthouse hosted a meet-and-greet for this batch of seven companies at River City Roll, a boutique bowling/food/live music venue in Richmond’s historic and vibrant Scotts Addition district. Lighthouse takes a founder-centric approach. It...
read moreStarlink and 50-plus Years of Satellites
The sight is startling: Two dozen lights moving across the early night sky in a gentle arc. This is a “train” of Starlink low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, lit up by the sun and still aligned, before separating and rising to their designated orbits. Given some recent client projects, satellites have been on my mind. My exposure to space-based telecom and media infrastructure, however, has a history. It goes back to my reporting on the technology side of the cable industry, which was transformed by the adoption of satellite-delivered media....
read moreMalone, Denver and Cable-Tec Expo
Cable-Tec Expo 2023 is in the books. That’s the 24th consecutive Expo I’ve attended, many of those like this one in Denver, at the convention center with the Big Blue Bear. Twenty-four years, but I remain a relative newcomer, a third-generation observer at best. There are plenty of vendors and operators from earlier days who are still up and about, and engaged. Take John Malone, who was interviewed via remote feed in the opening keynote session on Tues., Oct 17, by Liberty President and CEO Mike Fries. Yet even Malone isn’t a true cable...
read moreRSA Cryptographers’ Panel Weighs Quantum Risk
Several deadlines kept me from attending the RSA Conference last month in San Francisco. But having registered, I’ve been able to listen to recorded sessions, including ‘The Cryptographers’ Panel.’ Moderated as usual by Whitfield Diffie, co-founder of the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric key exchange, this year’s panel spent a lot of time on the threat of quantum computing. AI, Cryptography, Quantum Scorecard Offering historical context, panelist Adi Shamir – a regular at these annual talks – recalled that three promising...
read moreTech, Healthcare, Me and You
One of my early encounters with technology and healthcare came at a cable industry event. It was the 2009 NCTA Cable Show in Washington, DC, if memory serves, in the early days of DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts. The demo was a live, two-way video with a doctor in Alaska. That iteration of DOCSIS could support some compelling new applications, including the remote delivery of medical service. A decade later we had more high-speed data, including DOCSIS 3.1, with its 10x increase in downstream and upstream throughputs. In the introduction to their book on...
read moreTravel Diary: Satellites, Optics and More
It’s been a while since I’ve travelled for business. Last month, three events aligned in one week. I hit two of them: Satellite 2023 in Washington, DC, and the NTT Upgrade 2023 event in San Francisco. The closest I came to Light Reading’s Cable Next-Gen was a layover at the Denver International Airport. Sorry to have missed it. After checking in at Satellite 2023, I did a quick tour of the exhibit floor. This show has several vibes. There’s an international flavor, no surprise, given what satellites do. The suits and ties and overall business...
read moreThe ARRIS Story: Taking Flight
Back in the fall of 2019, a friend from the cable industry approached me with a very big writing project. The mission? Helping two executives tell the story of their company. The friend was Lela Corcoros; the two execs were Bob Stanzione and Dave Potts; and the company was ARRIS. Fast forward to today. Finally, the book is out. Across 18 chapters, we recount the fascinating history of ARRIS, from its origin as a joint venture between Nortel and ANTEC in 1995 to its eventual sale to CommScope in 2019. Many years, but the story moves quickly,...
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