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[Music]
today’s episode is proudly sponsored by
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welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast
where we scale up on our knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems
i’m trace blackmore the host of scaling
up
h2o and folks one of the things i want
to do with this podcast
is make it so when you tune in each and
every week that you know what is coming
up
in the water treatment community so i’m
going to try my best when i know of
items that are
approaching that i let you know so you
can get them on your calendar
or at the very least go to our show
notes page
at scalinguph2o.com and
figure out if that is something
that you want to attend i will always
have the links directly
to the conferences on my show notes page
i know so many people are driving when
they’re listening
to this podcast so please don’t take
your eyes
off the road to make a note we’re going
to make sure that we have that
information that you need
on our show notes page all you have to
do again is go to
scalinguph2o.com so coming up
is one of the most popular regional
conferences
in the united states it’s the texas
2021 virtual convention
now normally they don’t do it virtually
but because of all the things that are
going on
that’s kind of the new norm until we
figure out
what the next new norm is that’s going
to be
march 29th through april 1st
folks there’s over 130 presenters
at this conference they peer review
these these
are really interesting papers and here’s
the cool thing whenever i go to a
conference
i can only attend one
of the presentations and if they have
over 130 that means they’re going to
have a bunch that overlap each other
well on the virtual environment i know
we much rather be there in person
but on the virtual environment i can see
every single presentation on
my time so it’s on demand that means you
can attend
them all and folks i just love going to
conferences virtual conferences i know
they’re working on ways to
make sure networking is a part of it you
know one of the ways we worked with awt
last year
was we did the after hours hang
and we had hundreds of people on every
night where we were talking
in virtual chat rooms and and that’s
okay and i had a lot of fun putting that
on
so much fun we continue to put that on
on a regular basis in fact the next hang
is going to be
on april 8th at 6 p.m eastern standard
time
so plenty of time to register for that
if you are interested
so obviously networking is something
that’s very important to do
when you go to one of these conferences
you know i have a
certain checklist that i look at whether
i should go to a conference or not
normally i’ll look at the presentations
that they are doing
and i gotta tell you it’s really hard to
look at presentations and find
presentations that you’re going to say
nope that’s not going to move the needle
on me
getting better at what i do so the
simple choices is you’ve got to decide
if this is something you’re going to
invest
some time in whenever you go to one of
these conferences
you know i always look at it to in
addition to all the things we’ve talked
about so far
you are going to meet new people now i
know it’s different on virtual
conferences than
in-person conferences but still you’re
going to meet new people
especially if you make a
target a goal around meeting new people
you’re going to touch base with people
that you know
how cool is that you learn that you have
a common interest with somebody at one
of these conferences and then you get to
see them the next year and now they’re
one of
your friends so definitely touching base
with those people is always a reason
that i like going to these conferences
learning more about what you know so
when you’re sitting in those papers
you have a base knowledge now you’re
going to
increase that base knowledge
and or you’re going to look at what you
already know
in a different way maybe there’s another
way
of explaining how you’ve been explaining
something
to a customer and that is the key to
getting them to make that valuable
decision that you just
haven’t been able to get them to make
you never know what you’re going to pick
up
now here’s the big one and this is why i
love
surrounding myself with other people
and putting myself in situations like
conferences where i am forced
with all this information to learn new
things because folks we don’t know
what we don’t know and this
allows us a peek into
what do we not know we don’t know now we
have some
references we can do something with it
we can start to learn
and folks at these conferences we can
find people that are in the same boat as
we are and we can actually use each
other as accountability partners to make
sure
that we’re learning and maybe we’re
using each other to find
new information about how we’re going to
learn that so we don’t have to do it
alone
so many great things about putting
yourself in
one of these conferences and of course
as
always you get to talk with your peers
and you get to see
where your market is what’s going on in
the climate of today
what is the next new thing that you need
to know about
what’s working today that necessarily
is not going to work tomorrow what do
you have to know
so you can pivot so you are ready for
whatever changes
are on the horizon now if you go to one
of these conferences
you’re probably going to find a
presentation about ai
yes ai artificial intelligence
and that’s actually what our show is
about today
our guest today is neil sahuda and he’s
going to talk
all things about ai
my lab partner today is neil sahuta ibm
master inventor and united nations ai
subject matter expert how are you neil
doing well trace how you doing i’m doing
great you and i
are coming at each other from two
different sides of the country you’re in
california i’m in georgia but we’re
making it work
hey that’s the beauty of technology in
the digital age
that is exactly right neil you are a
very impressive individual i’m hoping
you tell the scaling up nation a little
bit
about yourself sure i uh
started my career as a management
consultant helping global fortune 500
companies like with their business
strategy
you know developing new products
services and i’ve always just been the
kind of guy that likes to solve problems
and not just like the problem at hand
but more generally
so i want to build a lot of intellectual
property like patents and stuff
and one day i got a knock on the door
from ibm r
d asking me about some of my work and uh
they said like you help us solve some
problems you want to come on board
what was back then code named watson and
so i wound up being part of like the
original
uh watson team and that actually started
my whole foray into artificial
intelligence
so i gotta ask you’re a master inventor
so
what’s the difference between an
inventor and a master inventor
master inventor is a special designation
ibm
gave to just a handful of people where
they basically created billions of
dollars worth of value to the company
and in exchange you get this nice title
and a whole bunch of extra work
got it well your specialty is a.i
and i know there’s a lot of people
listening today that might have
different definitions
for ai how would you define ai that’s a
good question
trace because there’s also a lot of hype
out there and
essentially ai is a machine that can
mimic
human thinking to do uh
low-level type of tasks that require
some level of cognition
meaning that the machine’s not given
like a decision tree or
a path but using like lots and lots of
data
it looks for patterns the data by itself
we give something called the ground
truth which is rules on how to make
decisions
and so the machine learns by reviewing
data by trying things through experience
through understanding natural language
so context jargon slang is not an issue
it’s not about keywords
so think of it as like an ai is like a
three-year-old kid
and you want to teach the three-year-old
something new right you don’t just say
you know what’s good versus bad behavior
you don’t list out both things
you give the child a few guidelines and
then the child figures out by
experience learning and that’s exactly
the same thing with the machine
except for the machine it goes from
three-year-old to phd in just a few
weeks
now i can’t help but think about the
1980s movie
war games when you were giving me that
definition have you seen the movie
i have fantastic movie all right so i
think the machine’s name was joshua it
was plain chess and then it was trying
to blow up the world
that that is true
that i know it’s very also a very
hollywood type of thing
because there’s always that versus
machine element
but ai machines technology general is
just a tool
and it’s all about how we choose to use
it right and if you remember in war
games
they let the machine play the game
without the missiles
and it learned there was no way to win
and they were coming back and saying
like why on earth would you ever want to
play this
yeah but then 20 years later we
developed skynet and then the same thing
happened so you just can’t win with
hollywood
no no no maybe one day a little more
optimistic
uh outlook but uh it’s like you you and
i hope to help
shape that mindset for that to happen
well i know you do some work in the
water treatment industry
using ai can you tell us a little bit
about that sure
i you know living in california water is
always a paramount concern out here
because we’re like
in a constant drought situation and
you know and if i remember quickly i
think a random report says there’s less
fresh water in the world than there is
oil
and so it puts a lot of
need i guess i’ll put put it that way on
maximizing the use of the water that we
have
and so things like how can we recycle
water how can we treat it
how you know how can we do a better job
of
trying to distribute it mitigate use of
loss
even things like the the use of water
for like agriculture like farmers can we
still maintain the same level of crops
just using less water
so these are all areas where we’re
actually applying ai
into to see if we can get not just
better efficiencies but
actually innovate and find new ways of
trying to do some of these things
most of our accounts will have some sort
of
computer controller attached to and it’s
measuring
the content of the water maybe specific
ions and then it’s
doing something based on what those
readings are can that be considered ai
um probably not if it’s just
following a set of rules and it’s
looking at thresholds we don’t really
call that ai
that there’s obviously an element of
like analytics there
ai would be more like the machine is
actually making decisions
so it might be judging that like you
know what the
the ionization is off balance
or maybe that there’s there’s too much
like particles in the water like there’s
too much filament or something like that
and it
makes a decision on its own to
make a change so it’ll improve like
filtration
or at least it’ll notify a human and say
whoa the water here there’s
there’s a little there’s something wrong
here i recommend doing this
it’s not just giving out an alert but
actually i recommend doing this or
actually taking the action
can you give us an example of how ai is
being used today to improve some of the
infrastructure we have around the
country
yeah so one of the big things uh is
leakage so you know as we’re
distributing water i’ve actually
heard even some areas in the u.s the the
loss could be almost 40 percent
and you know we’re always talking about
how can we improve that
and can we like marry ai with iot and
that’s actually what’s happening right
now
is you know we’re trying to add sensors
but we’re trying to identify
all the areas where like leakage might
actually happen
even in very minut subtle forms of
water pressure and it’s not just saying
like okay well this thing dipped over
here
the ai is constantly monitoring and
trying to figure out
where what actually might trigger
leakages
or you know even if there’s a slight dip
is that was it like a one-off or is that
going to be
is like that this is is there a small
practice one going to end up getting
bigger
so imagine if like you could have a
person
looking at 10 feet of pipe 24
7 right and see
the whole pipe during this time and is
just
laser focused on it to see if there’s
anything wrong
that’s one of the things that’s actually
going on from an infrastructure side
i’m trying to think as a water treater
listening to
this podcast they’re probably thinking
what do i need to know about ai
how do i even begin to start utilizing a
tool like this
in our day to day what would you say to
them
i would say that i think you should
learn a little bit of foundational
knowledge i actually think everyone
should
i might say you need to become a
technical savant or go take some
programming classes
but the interesting thing about ai is
that we’ve unlocked a whole new tool set
there’s a whole bunch of capabilities
that we’ve never had before
and we’re used to machines being like
automators right you can help us do
something faster or cheaper
or with less errors and we have this
this new capabilities now where machines
can actually do way more than that
and this is where we all struggle
whether we’re you know water
specialists or even a doctor or an
accountant
where because we’re so taught to think
about automation
that we don’t think about innovation we
don’t think about now that have these
actions
this new tools new capabilities could
actually do this
in a little bit of a different way that
actually might just be better
you know rather than improve things to
find
a new way of doing this that will be
more efficient
for me or may just open up other avenues
if you’ll indulge me for a second trace
i mean one good example of this is you
know we’re always talking about the
infrastructure around water
but we also learned that we could
actually use ai to influence
um consumer behavior on their water
consumption
this isn’t just like telling people like
hey if you take a five-minute shower
you’ll save x amount of gallons blah
blah blah but
there’s actually a whole bunch of ai
tools now helping farmers realize you
know what you could
irrigate your crops in a different way
you know ai is
helping you figure out how to use your
water resources more efficiently
and actually grow the same amount of
crops like 30 40 less water
and even in more arid areas
it’s the same type of thing you suddenly
people can actually grow more crops
with still less water to you know help
the local community
and so forth but it’s one of those
things like we can help on the
infrastructure side we can help with the
actual treatment of the water and we can
actually help on the consumption side as
well
that’s fascinating how would you go
about even getting the data
analyzing when the best time is to water
crops how to water them
how would you even do that that is a
fantastic
question trace because data is the fuel
for ai
you can’t really learn or do anything
without it we’ve been farming for
40 000 years and we’ve had like the
farmers
almanac we have all these we actually
have an insane amount of data
and especially with iot iot was starting
to be deployed for
farms back in 2010 and i
you know those iot sensors generate so
much data it’s really data for
machine consumption not human
consumption that we actually have
tons of data and we can marry that you
know we can marry things around
the weather the water infrastructure
even things around insects
we can even now optimize and say you
know we don’t need 10 gallons of water
to grow that island anymore that almond
really needs you know
four or you know this grape really
to grow that one grape really needs only
like a liter of water if we do it this
way
that’s fascinating i read just recently
you brought up almonds that almonds are
one of the most
water using crops that we have in the
united states
we don’t we don’t know what’s that right
that’s the challenge right we don’t
we don’t think of these things this is
why it’s like a different mindset
what do you think the next problem out
there that ai is destined to solve when
it comes to water
i i really hope and you know it’s
something i’m championing
is that can we use ai to
find better ways to unlock
more water resources and i’m not saying
let’s go tap into
like all the glaciers in antarctica um
you know we always talk about like
desalinization
or even trying to collect like rain
water
i think there’s actually much better
ways to improve our capacity and
collection
of fresh water you know i live in
california
and i live in southern california and
you know most people i don’t think
realize this
um the past several years we’ve had
about
one inch of rain right and there was i
think it was about two winters ago we
actually had
we call it deluge you know we’re
supposed to average 12 inches of rain
we’ve been averaging one
and then i think we couple years ago we
had i think over 20 inches of rain
and a lot of people were really happy
going yay you know we got all this water
and it’s like well we don’t actually
collect any of that rain water
right we don’t have any we did we never
put any basins or anything like that
we rely on the snow packs right
and those snowpacks don’t last forever
right they’re eventually going to at
least
melt partially in the summer so all this
water just rushed off into the
the ocean right and of course removed
all the
filth and chemicals and topsoil which is
another story
but it’s like why didn’t we build basins
right why didn’t we think about some of
these infrastructure issues we know our
population is still growing
we know you know the temperatures began
consistently hotter than the past
you know 20 years right
when we knew the rate this day legit
rain was coming why were we better
prepared for it
right and i get part of it is just it’s
a funding and it’s you know
it’s a decision but i think if we had ai
tools to help us say like you know by
the way if you had caught this rainwater
um not only would you guys have been
okay full of reserve for
no five years but you would have saved x
millions of dollars right because you
wouldn’t have to import this water
you don’t have to do this the price of
water would go down blah blah blah and i
think
i hate to say it this way it would
actually help us kind of build these
cases beyond just like do i have enough
water to drink
to have enough water to farm years ago
when i
visited l.a i remember somebody told me
to turn by the river
there was no river it was just a big
ditch
where i guess all that water gets
captured and taken back to the ocean
that’s that’s the problem it’s funny if
you’ve ever been to southern california
in particular
um you’ll see all these like waterways
but they’re completely dry and they have
been for a couple of decades now
and i’ve actually had people from out of
the state tell me like why do you have
all these things it’s like
normally there’s always water flowing
even in the summertime
it just shows you how much things have
changed well you wrote a book
about ai do you mind telling us a little
bit about that
sure i wrote a book it’s called only ai
revolution
and i wrote it for non-technical
people particularly like business
leaders like managers
and like directors and so forth because
the one thing i learned you know helping
build out the
essentially this ai ecosystem was
oh you know a lot of people were like
okay what what is ai
but more importantly what can i do with
it and if i can figure something out how
do i get started
and working with companies kind of
one-on-one and you know tapping into
that
innovation side of the house developing
that mindset
was good but it wasn’t a good way to try
and reach the masses because i just
thought more and more people have the
exact same sort of questions
so i wrote this book to actually help
answer those questions for people
because if you’re waiting for your smart
technologist folks to help you out
i hate to say it most of them probably
can’t right they just
don’t know the the pain points
and the day-to-day problems on the
ground
of a water professional or a doctor or a
lawyer
or a social media marketer right they
just
don’t know the domain well enough to say
oh hey by the way you can use this
technology to do xyz
so the most innovative
like companies the most innovative
solutions i’ve seen have actually come
from the water experts or from business
or domain experts
and that i think is what i really want
to try and tap into for people because i
know there’s a lot of fear and concern
and it’s like this is actually an
opportunity and i want people to feel
empowered and able to actually be a
driver
for the future and you actually have the
chance to create it not just hope for
the best
definitely at this day and age we need
all the good
that we can get and i know one of your
missions is to reposition
ai for social good how are you doing
that
working with the united nations i
actually have helped them start an
initiative called ai for good
and the whole point behind it is to
use ai and actually other emerging
technology to help make the sustainable
development goals
a reality and the sustainable
development goals or sdgs
are 17 goals for a better planet
help for people it’s things like you
know zero hunger
better access to health care protecting
uh you know like water and you know life
and so forth i won’t bore you with all
17.
but to do this we actually have to
create a
community and we have to actually bring
people together that want to work on
solutions
and help them kind of match make you
know even if they want to do small
things
right because small things add up give
them that venue and forum
and the united nations was definitely
the right organization because i hate to
say it this way
if one of the big companies like a
google
or a facebook or even a ge or proctor
and gamble try to do it people like well
what are they getting out of this right
there must be some money in it for them
and there’s really no
country out there that was willing to do
kind of it on its own
or make that kind of investment and so
the un became a really good platform
for this because they they own those
sdgs essentially
and i’m really proud to say that going
from
a keynote in front of the assembly where
they thought ai was terminator time
to um such a rapid movement when they
realized this could be
ai can be used for public service we in
the span of three and a half years have
uh either in progress or completed 116
projects
wow yeah and that and i think that’s
fantastic and what
it’s really done and helped do is
instill this mindset again
so not just about how to use ai but
about social
enterprise social entrepreneurship where
it’s perfectly okay to make money
there’s nothing wrong with making money
but there might be some opportunities to
have a positive social
impact at the same time and we don’t
teach ourselves to look for both
and this is a great opportunity to
actually give people the chance to do
that
and bring that into the world to
actually do both share it and inspire
other people do the same
what are some of the things that you do
to specifically inspire
people to do that i really believe in
the power of storytelling
and so i always try and share my story
or other relevant stories
so that people hear about the actions
that were taken and the outcomes and
hopefully that inspires them to try and
do something
right you know you know a little you
know thing that i actually do is i
stopped shaving with
any kind of water five years ago and so
i don’t shave every day and i know you
can’t see me but i’ve always got
constant peach fuzz
but i actually did that to help conserve
water and you know most people are like
well how much water are you saving i’m
saving a gallon a day
and people like that’s doesn’t seem like
a whole lot right you’re not really
moving the needle right
i’m like that’s true but i believe that
if you aggregate small things it makes a
difference
and so you know if i can inspire 10
people
with my story to do the same thing and
those people went up inspiring 10 more
people
suddenly we have a million people doing
this and now we’re saving a million
gallons of water a day
and i think that’s powerful but that
only happens by
doing something and sharing that story
that’s a great point you never know
where the ripples are going to reach
it’s like the water ball and filling
stations right i i
you know we have a lot of them like in
california and like
muslims major airports that i’ve seen
where you you put your water bottle in
there you know
reusable as you’re filling up has that
little counter and shows you how many
plastic bottles have been saved
and it’s like you know me i drink a lot
of water um
i’m probably personally just not making
a dent in that but to see the aggregate
like all the people that have used that
filling station and see like wow this
month we’ve saved over two million
plastic bottles it’s huge yeah in
addition it cost about five dollars to
buy water today
[Laughter]
so he’s saving money saving the planet
it’s a double
everybody wins you do a lot of speaking
on
culture and culture something that we’ve
talked about uh
quite a bit on this show but i’m curious
what are some of the things that you do
to help people develop a world-class
culture
that’s a that’s a great question a
couple of things i do is beyond the
storytelling
is i really try to lead by example
and you know and show that i eat my own
dog food so to speak
i’m not just done you rah-rah-rah but
the the third thing is i really try and
actually
speak the language of that person
right i try and find what are the right
motivators
or points whatever you want to call it
that’s going to resonate with them
right and that’s one big thing i’ve
learned is that
we all kind of have different things
that we value
and you know whereas like one person
might really be into facts
that person might be into fun another
person might be into
value that person might be into the
economics and so if you really want to
instill this culture
you have to recruit your champions first
and the only way you get your champions
is to speak their language and give them
the whiffle what’s in it for me
to inspire them to become the the the
cheerleaders so to speak of their
organization
to shift the culture because changing a
culture
whether it’s a big change or small
change takes time and a lot of effort
and it’s it’s funny cultural of those
ethereal thanks trace where i think
people kind of underscore the value
but we all know that it’s really hard to
be successful without it because if
our our employees our customers our
partners whoever might be aren’t buying
in
they’re never going to adopt and
actually do it and
you know i love sports and it’s i think
it’s
it’s just really amazing to see what’s
going on because they really got into
like the analytics or sabermetrics all
these other things about where to shoot
where to position players for defense
all these things
and now suddenly all these teams are
realizing i’ve kind of
optimized as much as i can from a
plane standpoint and i’m not getting the
desired outcomes in large part because
of the team culture
and now they’re looking at things like
even ai on figuring out like
based on people’s personalities and
playing styles
how do i actually mesh together the most
optimal team
and i actually know some companies are
doing the same thing now like if i’m
going to form a project team
how do i put it together right it’s no
longer just about who’s the best or
right skills
i need people that can work together
well and
believe in the same goal and want to
make that happen and
that’s i think really how you know at
least i try to
to move the needle on the culture aspect
but i won’t sugarcoat it requires a lot
of work but it’s well worth it
you know i was just thinking as you were
speaking is there any area of life where
ai can’t get involved and help out in
um i know that from a sector industry
standpoint there’s somebody doing
something in all of them
but don’t get me wrong there’s a lot of
things that people do better than
machines like ai like
you know ai can only do what we teach it
to do it’s not thinking on its own
it’s not trying to learn on its own and
so if there’s something that we can’t
teach ai then it really can’t do it
and you know really some big areas there
around creativity and imagination
and i think that’s that’s something so
far i’ve not seen ai be able to help us
do it’s not helping us be more
imaginative more creative
right it just can’t even figure out how
to teach those concepts
and i actually see that’s a big plus for
us and that
as you know machines take on a little
bit more of the grunt work and sweeten
our time up to do the more complex work
but also freeing up our time to be more
creative to innovate
you know you you think about some of
those things that you kind of wish you
had time to stop and go like well
there’s gotta be a better way of doing
this we’re creating those opportunities
for ourselves
and we should really take advantage of
that well that makes me feel good so the
machines
ultimately cannot take over because they
need our imaginative
and creativeness and don’t worry you
look at something like you know the
google brain or ibm watson it’s not just
sitting there and it’s quote unquote
downtime wondering like
hey i’m going to teach myself how to
drive or i’m going to teach myself
you know how to play the piano it it’s
it’s actually doing nothing
they’re all passive systems if you don’t
give it something to do it
just does nothing neil let me ask what’s
the bottom line of your
message today what do you want people to
leave this interview with
well i i want them to feel hopeful that
it’s not a dark bleak future where
machines are going to take all our jobs
and rise up and eradicate humanity
not at all and i really want people to
take away that this is not the realm
of just technologists that you know
there’s that was that old
uh saying that the best way to predict
the future is to create it
i think we each have an opportunity to
actually create that feature with ai
we each know our space our pain points
really well
and you’ll just understand a little bit
about the capabilities again not not the
deep technology behind it not about
neural networks but just a little bit
about what ai can do and not do
can unlock really great opportunities it
could be for yourself
your family community your your business
whoever but we each have that
opportunity and i really
want people to feel empowered
emboldened to actually try and seize
that opportunity
well this has been a fascinating
interview i’ve learned a lot
i know a lot of people in the scaling up
nation are thinking about ai
and just what are the capabilities of
the future you know how can we
assign this some data to work on some of
the problems that we need to fix but i
do have a couple of questions for you
before i let you go so these are my
lightning round questions
if you’re up for it sure let’s do it
trace
all right so you now have the ability to
go back in time there’s probably some
machine and terminator we’re going to
use for that
and you’re going to see yourself on your
very first day
as an ai specialist what advice would
you give yourself
um that’s a great question i would
probably tell myself that
um definitely don’t lose hope but
think about the possibilities think
about the art of the possible
and that when i started on this path i
was actually very thinking very narrow
you know we’re thinking about how do we
win the jeopardy
challenge and it wasn’t until much later
after that we realized that there’s way
more potential
i re if i had a chance to go back in
time i told myself think about that
potential
because i think that we probably could
unlock a lot more a lot faster
we could probably imagine some of the
fears concerns much better
than we initially did what are the last
few books that you’ve read
a great question um last couple of books
i’ve read
so one actually i read a book that’s not
out yet my
my friend brendan kane wrote a book
called uh
hook point which is uh really
fascinating i think will come out next
year but it’s basically
how do you get someone’s attention in a
noisy world like you basically have
three seconds to capture someone’s
attention
how do you do that i thought that was
really fascinating you know especially
in our go go go
social media world i also read a book
called
slack which i thought was fascinating
about how we’ve basically stifled our
ability to innovate
because we were so uh essentially
obsessed as
enterprises to fill every second of our
employees time
that we’ve forgotten the fact that
people find better ways to do their job
when they have down time
and we’ve taken that away and so we if
we want to be innovative again and
create that kind of
culture we have to create downtime for
people
so two two really good books when
hollywood finds out about you
we know they’re going to make a movie
about your life story who plays you
know if anyone could play me in a movie
i would go with ryan gosling
because i always joke that uh you know
um
when i do like a video interview when
you edit it just make me look like him
there you go
there you go that’s why i have a podcast
i have that kind of face
all right my final question you now can
talk to anybody throughout history who
to be with
and why it’s a fantastic question and i
would actually
love to go back and have a conversation
with leonardo da vinci
right because he’s the quintessential
renaissance man
and a lot of people have actually told
me that i’m like a renaissance man
you know i’m doing a couple of really
big different things
and i would just love to learn how he
did he didn’t right because he was an
amazing
you know painter artist in general
scientist you know writer
how on earth did he do all these things
but more importantly
how was he inspired to do it right do
you used to have a passion for learning
and doing
it would be fantastic to just meet a
person that
is like kind of like me but to like the
ants agree better
great answers to all those neil thanks
so much for coming on
and uh educating us all a little bit
better about ai
and if somebody does want to find out
more about you
and what you do what should they do
more happy to chat with anybody you can
always go to my
website mealsoda.com and there’s a
contact form you can
connect and follow me on linkedin as
well as twitter
and uh you know always see what i’m up
to and i’m always actually publishing
articles on forbes so a lot of great
ways to see what i’m doing or
reach out and have a conversation well
awesome neil thank you so much for
coming on scaling up h2o
hey my pleasure thanks for having me
trace
neil thanks again for coming on scaling
up
h2o and when i think of when i
started in the water treatment industry
and it was in
the 1990s i remember
that that was when the microprocessor
controller was the standard and that was
a big change
for when my dad started in the industry
and i don’t even know when that was that
was probably in the
70s i would imagine so with that
my dad wasn’t working with any
microprocessing control
so what does that mean that means he was
working with
limited data and pretty much everything
that he
did was done by an individual
well when i started we had controls that
was using
just a small amount of information
allowing that information to do
something to respond in some way well
now if you fast forward to
today all the controls that we are using
are smarter what does that mean it means
that they are gathering so much
information and they’re able to do
things
with that information in fact on
episode 168 we had jared
gable come on and he talked all things
feed pumps and he was talking about
artificial intelligence he was saying
that a
feed pump can collect data and do things
with the data and actually make
predetermined decisions
based on what that data was folks
this is here and it’s very exciting
because ultimately it means we can do
more of what we are valued in doing
which is making sure that we’re using
water to its fullest potential
making sure that we are keeping scale at
a minimum
making sure that corrosion is at a
minimum
and then dirt and debris hopefully we’re
filtering that out and then finally
we’re taking care
of the microbial so all the things that
plague us
when we are working with water we can
use
artificial intelligence to help us out
with that
data allows us to make better
decisions we make better decisions
when we have better data
when we don’t have data well folks we’re
not making decisions
we’re making guesses so how good
are your guesses nation something we do
each and every week to make sure that we
are getting just a little bit better
is james’s challenge so once again
here is another installment of james’s
challenge
[Music]
hello scaling up nation it’s time for
another james’s challenge
to help you grow as an industrial water
treatment professional drop by drop
james’s challenge is
test boiler sulfite immediately on a
sample
leave the sample open to the atmosphere
and test again an hour later
will you see a difference in your test
reading some water tests can wait for
hours days or weeks to be conducted on a
sample with no change
others need to be analyzed immediately
because their numbers may change with
time
exposure to the atmosphere expose it to
the sample container etc
also even if you theoretically expect to
see a difference or not
nothing beats actually seeing it with
your own two eyes
be sure to share your experience on
linkedin by tagging it with hashtag jc21
and hashtag scalinguph2o this is james
mcdonald and i look forward to seeing
what you share
you know when i think about what we’re
doing with our
own data what’s the information that we
have
in our heads and how do we know that
that’s relevant of course i
started off talking in the intro of this
show
about going to conferences to make sure
that we’re always learning but there’s
so many
other things that we can do i am a huge
fan of reading one of the reasons i love
reading because on my time on
my terms i can read something and i can
learn
what i don’t know i don’t know and most
books will tell you what you need to do
in order to know what you don’t know of
course
you’re the one that has to figure out
what it is that you don’t know
but most books have action items to tell
you exactly
what to do and i love challenging myself
to know that i’m pushing myself to
the next level but i’m going to be
honest with you there are certain things
that i
need help with to get pushed to the next
level
and some of those things i need an
accountability partner with
now an accountability partner is
somebody that
you can go to and they know where you
are
and they can also help you get there but
doesn’t have to be one-sided normally
it’s two-sided so if there’s something
that we’re both trying to achieve we can
split
up the labor on the heavy lifting of all
the knowledge that
we need to amass in order to get there
and then
help each other arrive to that
destination
that’s one of the keys in a mastermind
group and i know you’ve heard me talk
about that
on several previous shows when i’ve
talked about the rising tide mastermind
well next week i’m going to interview
the mastermind group that i’m personally
a member of called
iron sharpens iron and our facilitator
aaron walker is going to be my guest
now folks i truly believe that we need
other people to help us see what we
don’t see
and to help us get there and
continuously help
us get better so that’s why i started
the rising tide mastermind but it’s also
why i am a member of a mastermind
myself so next week you’re going to hear
from aaron walker
he’s such a fun guest he’s a great
facilitator
and you’re going to hear many of the
reasons why i
wanted to start my own mastermind and
the man who really encouraged me to
start and continue to do the rising tide
mastermind
like i said he’s a really fun guest i
know you’re going to
enjoy it until next week i would love it
if you can try something new
try to learn something new and
do something new and be the reason
that you make someone else smile folks
there’s so
many things going on out there in the
world
i urge you to be the reason that
somebody
cracks a smile this week have a great
week folks
i’ll see you next friday
[Music]