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ERG Conference and Dallas Pride Day 3
Sep. 14th, 2018 11:59 pmFRIDAY
Woke up at six again and got to breakfast a little after seven. Sat with Rashid (Cheryl's boss), his colleague Bobby, and Erin and Jennifer from Dallas. Jennifer said her cousin is John Manley, a DJ for The End in Seattle, and she's from Wisconsin originally. Spotted a cute cub with a headset by the audiovisual booth at the back of the ballroom. Met Mandy and Addi also from Dallas after I finished my breakfast. As the program started Kevin from LEAGUE formerly based in MI but now in DFW sat with us. First speaker was Corey Anthony, CDO.
2016 - What? Tolerance is for cowards
2017 - How? Avoid echo chambers and binary thinking
2018 - Why? High-trust organizations win.
Why take risks? 1. We're all leaders and can't be effective if we don't. 2. It enriches our experience.
Are we willing and able to listen without judgment?
Rasesh Patel - Champions of D&I
Debra Fifer won the award - member of all 12 ERGs
Jason Leiker - Community Engagement - Aspire Mentoring Award - Hacemos
Morning panel discussion introduced by Dee Dee Myers, Clinton WH press secretary, inspiration for CJ on The West Wing, and now chief spokesperson for Warner Brothers. See slide. Big topic of discussion is casting for Crazy Rich Asians. Also the diversity access program at HBO, because there's a need to sidestep "it's not what you know, it's who you know." Contemporary content production under Stage 13 (bc there is no physical Stage 13 on the WB lot). HBO has 108 Emmy nominations.
Better Together Awards
The Power of You - NJ
Paddle for Pink - NY/NJ
Internet of Things micro:bit - NJ
Your Brain on Change
Puzzle building exercise, basically highly distilled B.S. followed by a brief overview of neuroscience and tips on how to avoid binary thinking and find common ground.
Lunch program - Sat with Eddie from Dallas and Renita from Austin. Panel discussion with the CEOs of all four operating companies.
John Donovan - Believe Chicago initiative. You be you and we in leadership need to shape the culture around you all.
John Stankey - WarnerMedia creates impact if the right people are involved, both business and creative
Lori Lee - Many suppliers at different points working toward AT&T as the standard.
Brian Lesser - Cover model for Ad Age, building a business from ground up.
Bill Kennard - Ex-FCC chair and ex-ambassador to the EU, currently AT&T board member. The Challenge of Being First. Black Surprise - Bill's first day at the FCC (as General Counsel), Mom's reaction at my description of Gary. More important than being first is ensuring you're not the last.
What Is Data Science?
Deep domain knowledge is needed to make actionable insights.
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.
Skill set: math, programming, and business
Key business skill is storytelling (Hi Ginger!)
Key math skill is probability and sadistics
Training: PLE, Moods, Self Help. Training Plan #61125990 in PLE
40k Google searches per second
Data by itself is useless. Data is only useful if you apply it.
Yield management - where to build cell towers?
Mythbusting
No need to have a PhD or specific advanced degree (Austin has an art degree)
More data may not lead to better analytic results. It depends.
Data Science is predictive, while Business Intelligence is descriptive (after the fact)
Q&A
Automation helps with research but does not replace data scientists
Use cases - advertising, dispatch optimization, authentication and authorization
Course work approved for reimbursement is recognized elsewhere as well
stack.web.att.com - internal Stack Exchange Q&A site
More "what if" than HP
Amazon Prime video tracks usage down to what time of day and what % was watched
Price is Right audio from next door is a little distracting
Natural language processing (chatbots)
Unstructured data (logs)
Streaming analytics (Spark, Scala)
Visible and Invisible
Roger Hyde - from South Africa, gay, Jewish - bad combination in Germany in 1989. Husband also works for AT&T, only known same-sex couple where both spouses do. Ignorance is the enemy of acceptance. Humans are genetically 99.8% the same.
Pamela Osborne - black Puerto Rican woman, military brat. AT&T Women of Business co-chair. Not giving veterans opportunities as we should. Need to be intentional about correcting bias.
Mark Page - started as a non-management employee in the basement copy center, now a VP. Asking for better representation of diversity in leadership. The worst bias is unconscious.
Pam Abel - Sponsor for Ability - physical disability from car wreck, WFH on bad days. To kids, it doesn't matter what color you are. Long distances from parking to office. What are these kids wearing?
Aside: Drank too much coffee today.
iCount self-reporting program
Returned to the room to relax, recharge, and change clothes. At dinner, sat with Kevin formerly from Detroit and his colleague Lisa, Brian (local) and Jason from San Antonio, all from LEAGUE, plus a contingent of 5 local folks I hadn't met before. One of the locals was a big & tall black dude from College Station named Michael Brown. I overheard one of his colleagues saying he should Google his name. Not nice...
Randall Stephenson keynote on values
Be there - Hurricane Florence, last year in Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico
Embrace freedom - Frustrated with the President disrespecting the news media. "Just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean it's fake." "I will commit AT&T resources to ensure a free press wherever our people are operating."
Make a difference - That's where ERGs come in.
Kelly King, CEO, AT&T Mexico - T2U Spark Awards
Mark Patterson won an individual award
Thaddeus Arroyo - ERG in Action Awards
Jennifer Hatmaker - blogger on family and home renovation. Very diverse family (see photo; the two youngest are adopted from Ethiopia). We're all tired of the screaming and infighting and incivility. Why is it easier to stay in our silos and treat everyone else as our enemy? It's easy and it demands nothing of us. Jennifer and her husband are both ministers. Any group can become what it is working against without vigilance. Once your eyes become adjusted to the pain and suffering of others, you will start to see it everywhere. Have to triage the need to be right and just listen. Proximity is a magic bullet in this work. It's easier to hate who we don't know. Most tribal dynamics can't stand being rattled. Will my 95-year-old self be proud of me?
At the after party I got acquainted with Jackson Ku who I get lots of email from, and had a friendly chat with Michael. I also met one of Jonny's local colleagues named Sal. Cute cublet with a wife (WIFE?!) and kids. Went back to the room to change out of the suit and recharge my phone, and chatted with Gary via text before heading up to the LEAGUE hospitality room. There I had a nice chat with Curtis from San Diego who was craving a Whataburger last time we were out together (he eventually got one). His sister lives in Brier, so when he was in town to visit her I responded to his FB post from Mukilteo (as he reminded me). I also met Christopher from Las Vegas who is moving to Dallas soon, and we talked about Vegas weather and hockey. Toward the end of the evening I met David who was tall and cubbish although clean shaven, and wore a Mexican national team soccer scarf. He told me he was flying to Mexico in the morning for their independence day celebration (no, it's not 5 de Mayo). I told him he'd just missed Eman who I'm sure would have hit it off with him.
Just before I left I chatted with Ashley who grew up in Puyallup and moved to Seattle proper, but now lives in Dallas. I returned to the room and phoned Gary to catch up before bed.
Woke up at six again and got to breakfast a little after seven. Sat with Rashid (Cheryl's boss), his colleague Bobby, and Erin and Jennifer from Dallas. Jennifer said her cousin is John Manley, a DJ for The End in Seattle, and she's from Wisconsin originally. Spotted a cute cub with a headset by the audiovisual booth at the back of the ballroom. Met Mandy and Addi also from Dallas after I finished my breakfast. As the program started Kevin from LEAGUE formerly based in MI but now in DFW sat with us. First speaker was Corey Anthony, CDO.
2016 - What? Tolerance is for cowards
2017 - How? Avoid echo chambers and binary thinking
2018 - Why? High-trust organizations win.
Why take risks? 1. We're all leaders and can't be effective if we don't. 2. It enriches our experience.
Are we willing and able to listen without judgment?
Rasesh Patel - Champions of D&I
Debra Fifer won the award - member of all 12 ERGs
Jason Leiker - Community Engagement - Aspire Mentoring Award - Hacemos
Morning panel discussion introduced by Dee Dee Myers, Clinton WH press secretary, inspiration for CJ on The West Wing, and now chief spokesperson for Warner Brothers. See slide. Big topic of discussion is casting for Crazy Rich Asians. Also the diversity access program at HBO, because there's a need to sidestep "it's not what you know, it's who you know." Contemporary content production under Stage 13 (bc there is no physical Stage 13 on the WB lot). HBO has 108 Emmy nominations.
Better Together Awards
The Power of You - NJ
Paddle for Pink - NY/NJ
Internet of Things micro:bit - NJ
Your Brain on Change
Puzzle building exercise, basically highly distilled B.S. followed by a brief overview of neuroscience and tips on how to avoid binary thinking and find common ground.
Lunch program - Sat with Eddie from Dallas and Renita from Austin. Panel discussion with the CEOs of all four operating companies.
John Donovan - Believe Chicago initiative. You be you and we in leadership need to shape the culture around you all.
John Stankey - WarnerMedia creates impact if the right people are involved, both business and creative
Lori Lee - Many suppliers at different points working toward AT&T as the standard.
Brian Lesser - Cover model for Ad Age, building a business from ground up.
Bill Kennard - Ex-FCC chair and ex-ambassador to the EU, currently AT&T board member. The Challenge of Being First. Black Surprise - Bill's first day at the FCC (as General Counsel), Mom's reaction at my description of Gary. More important than being first is ensuring you're not the last.
What Is Data Science?
Deep domain knowledge is needed to make actionable insights.
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.
Skill set: math, programming, and business
Key business skill is storytelling (Hi Ginger!)
Key math skill is probability and sadistics
Training: PLE, Moods, Self Help. Training Plan #61125990 in PLE
40k Google searches per second
Data by itself is useless. Data is only useful if you apply it.
Yield management - where to build cell towers?
Mythbusting
No need to have a PhD or specific advanced degree (Austin has an art degree)
More data may not lead to better analytic results. It depends.
Data Science is predictive, while Business Intelligence is descriptive (after the fact)
Q&A
Automation helps with research but does not replace data scientists
Use cases - advertising, dispatch optimization, authentication and authorization
Course work approved for reimbursement is recognized elsewhere as well
stack.web.att.com - internal Stack Exchange Q&A site
More "what if" than HP
Amazon Prime video tracks usage down to what time of day and what % was watched
Price is Right audio from next door is a little distracting
Natural language processing (chatbots)
Unstructured data (logs)
Streaming analytics (Spark, Scala)
Visible and Invisible
Roger Hyde - from South Africa, gay, Jewish - bad combination in Germany in 1989. Husband also works for AT&T, only known same-sex couple where both spouses do. Ignorance is the enemy of acceptance. Humans are genetically 99.8% the same.
Pamela Osborne - black Puerto Rican woman, military brat. AT&T Women of Business co-chair. Not giving veterans opportunities as we should. Need to be intentional about correcting bias.
Mark Page - started as a non-management employee in the basement copy center, now a VP. Asking for better representation of diversity in leadership. The worst bias is unconscious.
Pam Abel - Sponsor for Ability - physical disability from car wreck, WFH on bad days. To kids, it doesn't matter what color you are. Long distances from parking to office. What are these kids wearing?
Aside: Drank too much coffee today.
iCount self-reporting program
Returned to the room to relax, recharge, and change clothes. At dinner, sat with Kevin formerly from Detroit and his colleague Lisa, Brian (local) and Jason from San Antonio, all from LEAGUE, plus a contingent of 5 local folks I hadn't met before. One of the locals was a big & tall black dude from College Station named Michael Brown. I overheard one of his colleagues saying he should Google his name. Not nice...
Randall Stephenson keynote on values
Be there - Hurricane Florence, last year in Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico
Embrace freedom - Frustrated with the President disrespecting the news media. "Just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean it's fake." "I will commit AT&T resources to ensure a free press wherever our people are operating."
Make a difference - That's where ERGs come in.
Kelly King, CEO, AT&T Mexico - T2U Spark Awards
Mark Patterson won an individual award
Thaddeus Arroyo - ERG in Action Awards
Jennifer Hatmaker - blogger on family and home renovation. Very diverse family (see photo; the two youngest are adopted from Ethiopia). We're all tired of the screaming and infighting and incivility. Why is it easier to stay in our silos and treat everyone else as our enemy? It's easy and it demands nothing of us. Jennifer and her husband are both ministers. Any group can become what it is working against without vigilance. Once your eyes become adjusted to the pain and suffering of others, you will start to see it everywhere. Have to triage the need to be right and just listen. Proximity is a magic bullet in this work. It's easier to hate who we don't know. Most tribal dynamics can't stand being rattled. Will my 95-year-old self be proud of me?
At the after party I got acquainted with Jackson Ku who I get lots of email from, and had a friendly chat with Michael. I also met one of Jonny's local colleagues named Sal. Cute cublet with a wife (WIFE?!) and kids. Went back to the room to change out of the suit and recharge my phone, and chatted with Gary via text before heading up to the LEAGUE hospitality room. There I had a nice chat with Curtis from San Diego who was craving a Whataburger last time we were out together (he eventually got one). His sister lives in Brier, so when he was in town to visit her I responded to his FB post from Mukilteo (as he reminded me). I also met Christopher from Las Vegas who is moving to Dallas soon, and we talked about Vegas weather and hockey. Toward the end of the evening I met David who was tall and cubbish although clean shaven, and wore a Mexican national team soccer scarf. He told me he was flying to Mexico in the morning for their independence day celebration (no, it's not 5 de Mayo). I told him he'd just missed Eman who I'm sure would have hit it off with him.
Just before I left I chatted with Ashley who grew up in Puyallup and moved to Seattle proper, but now lives in Dallas. I returned to the room and phoned Gary to catch up before bed.