Listen to the highlights of this newsletter here:
https://soundcloud.com/viodi/a-tribute-to-tom-olson-october-25th-viodi-view-newsletter
It is the connections with people that ultimately matter in business. This is an unintentional lesson taught by mentor and friend, Tom Olson. In sharing a fun Twitter thread with him last weekend, I had hoped to bring a smile to Tom’s face, by reminding him of the wisdom of our mutual friend, Yoshida Furahata. I will never know if it brought that smile.
This weekend, there will be plenty of connections rekindled at Calix’s ConneXions 2019 and the associated events, such as Saturday’s Broadband Forum’s BASe, North American Summit. This will be a great opportunity to learn new things from the presenters and each other. Look for the Viodi camera and say hello.
Fiber, 5G, and Beyond
In this interview, Calix’s Teresa McGaughey provides a glimpse of some of the conversations that will be held at ConneXions 2019 as well as this week’s Mobile World Congress in Los Angeles. She discusses the critical role of fiber, particularly technologies like NG-PON2, for bringing the bandwidth and low-latency necessary to make 5G a reality.
The Software-Defined Home of the Future
A hot topic at ConneXions will be the so-called smart home. At CES2019, KB Homes’ SVP Dan Bridleman gave a vision for their vision for the elements of what will make a future home, “smart”. In many ways, just as hardware is being abstracted from the software applications, Bridleman describes future homes as being able to adapt to different uses, changing lifestyles and new technologies. He describes the need for a fiber optic, last mile as a sort table stakes for enabling this smart home of the future.
Turning Air Into Water
One of the technologies that offer the promise of making the smart home of the future more resilient is from an Arizona-based company, Zero Mass Water. Their magic technology uses solar energy to capture and convert humidity into drinkable water. It is already making a difference to people in remote villages that don’t have the luxury of a municipal water system to areas struck by disaster to individual homeowners looking for an alternative to bottled water.
Will Solar Be a Driver of Autonomous Vehicles?
Speaking of solar, Alta Devices demonstrated their thin-film, solar cells at the World Safety Summit on Autonomous Technology. These lightweight power-generators are enabling new hardware, such as drones or airships that can fly virtually non-stop. In turn, this will enable entirely new applications such as the untethered rural cell tower.
Some Tweets and Short Thoughts:
- Did I hear that the #Pixel4 radar will also allow it to see through things? Reminds me of my interview with
@VayyarInc & their smartphone add-on that allows one to see through walls, sense motion & even detect cancer. - @TomBamonte “Texas A&M @tamu leading project to test autonomous vehicles on rural roads. Description of @USDOT #ATCMTD grant program.”
- @DriverlessNow “World’s First Fully Autonomous Farm by 2025?” On 40-acres just south of Fargo is this experiment that offers the potential to revive small farms.
Tom Olson – 1938 to 2019
This is a story I didn’t want to publish or, at the very least, hoped it was wrong. Tom Olson the person I have known longest in my professional career has passed to the great cable network in the sky. As my friend and fellow Tomco alum, Daryl Patrick so eloquently wrote to me this morning, “Seems the Lord needed a good cable man to straighten out his reception in the Great By and By, cause Messmer couldn’t fix it.” Between Tom Olson and, the late John Messmer, there is plenty of brainpower to fix any network.
Tom was an unheralded builder of the cable industry, particularly, in the 1970s, when his designs and products could be found under the Tomco brand, as well as many other cable equipment brands, such as Scientific Atlanta, Jerrold, Times Fiber and RCA. More than the cable connections he enabled, it was the connections he made with and between people that will be his legacy. Thank you for everything, Tom.
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