Tag Archives: Clinton Global Initiative

AVG

A Time to Celebrate Diversity  

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Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day in the U.S., a day to remember the great Civil Rights champion. I think it’s also a day for us in the tech industry to celebrate diversity and reflect on it.

There was a significant development in tech diversity earlier this month.  Intel CEO Brian Krzanich pledged in his CES keynote address to invest $300 million over the next five years to improve the diversity of the company’s workforce. The investment will be used to attract more women and minorities for engineering and computer science positions, actively support and retain those new employees, and fund programs to support more positive diversity within the larger technology and gaming industries.

And, at least in my mind, equally importantly, as part of its effort, Intel is attempting to achieve “full representation” of women and under-represented minorities within the company by 2020, including in senior leadership positions.

“It’s not good enough to say we value diversity and then under-represent women and minorities,” Krzanich stated in his address. “Intel wants to lead by example.”

This was really refreshing and good news to hear from one of technology’s leading companies, and I applaud it.

The move follows a breakthrough last year when top tech companies released their workforce make-ups for the first time.  Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, Instagram were among the companies to report.

The numbers show that women represent no more than 30 percent of the workforce in many of the top companies. (Full disclosure: This is true for AVG as well.) Another snapshot provided in the latest (ISC)2 workforce study, published in spring 2013, shows that as a whole, the information security sector trails significantly with only 10% of its professionals female.

That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the overall representation of minorities. This chart from the Guardian newspaper created by Information is Beautiful provides a view of gender and racial diversity make-up of the tech and social media industry.

Guardian Technology Diversity

 

Since last year’s report, a number of companies have begun to step up and invest in diversity, as we’ve previously written. In June, Google announced a program to get more women into tech with a $50 million fund to encourage girls to take up computer science in college and other grants and programs.  Its “Made with Code” campaign is in partnership with Girls Who Code, a nonprofit organization that runs summer coding schools for girls, and The Clinton Foundation, whose No Ceilings project aims to promote full participation by girls and women in all aspects of society.  You can read about it here.

More recently, the Hour of Code, while not aimed specifically at women and minorities, was another excellent step in promoting overall interest in computer science during Computer Science Education Week. They reported more than 10 million girls tried computer since in that one week – more than the total of the last 70 years! You can learn more at code.org.

While there is more work to be done to move diversity forward, these are good starts for our industry.

I am looking forward to contributing to the effort to help close the diversity gap in the tech industry and encourage women in technology careers as a speaker at the 2015 SXSW Interactive program with a Core Conversation on “Boardroom or Baby? The Choices Women have in Tech” on March 14th.  If you’re planning to attend the conference in Austin, Texas, please put 3:30-4:30 p.m. on your calendar to join the conversation. I’m sure it will be lively!

See Judith Bitterli at SXSW 2015

 

Title image courtesy of the bbc

AVG

Preparing for the Social Internet of Things

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Factor in the booming Internet of Things and researchers estimate there will be 50 billion connected devices in the market by 2020! These are big numbers with big implications for the tech industry and our customers.

When you break it down, it means every day millions of new users will get their first smartphone or tablet, or change to a new device, or add other connected digital device such as wearables, activity monitors, health apps, and even their cars…and be coming online with all the data that goes with them. These aren’t just faceless people, but our nephews, nieces, children and grandchildren.

Now, think about when you first came online. For many of us, we had the benefit of growing up with the Internet and were able to make mistakes and learn from them as we went along. The next two billion users won’t have that luxury. They are coming online in the age of the Social Internet of Things and will experience a much larger interconnected world. They will surely find great delight, but every mistake made could be broadcast to billions of people, along with increasing pitfalls and exponentially greater consequences.

Just think about the rise in teen and celebrity sexting scandals and over-disclosure, cyber-bulling, and the mounting security breaches at major banks and retailers putting millions of credit card users at risk.

The bottom line is that businesses have to earn the right to engage with the next two billion web users and that is achieved by earning their trust.

Global research we did with MEF Global Forum earlier this year also reinforces this point. We found that:

  • 40% of mobile media users cited trust as a barrier to purchasing goods and services online via their mobile
  • 65% said they were unhappy sharing personal information with apps.

At AVG with three million Facebook followers and 25,000-50,000 conversations happening daily – we also hear this echoed from our customers. Now magnify the concern consumers will have in a world where every smart connected device is sending our data to the Internet!

I explored the topic of “Building Trust for the Social Internet of Things,” at the MEF Global Forum event In San Francisco last week during a session and panel called, “Know thy Customer, Mastering the Consumer Experience.”  Our mission was to explore shifting consumer experiences and what it means to those of us in the industry and businesses.  I wanted to bring the perspective of what users want and need, and what it means from a mobile security, privacy and trust point of view.

We in the industry need to start planning now for the next two billion users. People need to know that they don’t have to give up their privacy every time they go online.   How do we make that experience all that it promises to be and develop their trust in our brands? How do we equip them for the Social Internet of Things?

Brands must adapt to address the concerns of a new and more connected audience and be willing to help build a future where it is as easy to be safe online as it is to connect a device to the net. People need to change as well. They need to prepare themselves for new technologies and an interconnected age of Digital Citizenship.

At AVG we envision a world of “smart users.” That’s why we recently started a Smart User Initiative as part of the Clinton Global Initiative.  Our goal is to increase the ratio of smart users to smartphones by teaching the next two billion Digital Citizens skills in how to engage in the digital world safely and securely in a way that protects them and others. And we’re putting out a call for partners– other brands, businesses, organizations, carriers, manufactures, and content producers – to join us on this mission.

You can read more about AVG’s Smart User Initiative in a blog by our CLO Harvey Anderson. His Op-Ed on this topic also appeared on Re/code recently.

Let’s strive to make the experience for the next two billion people coming online in the age of Social Internet of Things, more personal, trusted and the best it can possibly be…