Network Insights Volume 6

I’m really excited about just how much possibility there could be around advanced data science techniques to analyze the unstructured data… to help us get more insights and help reduce risk in the workplace.

Christian Johnson, on his outlook for the future

” I think this is really going to push technology and digital solutions to the forefront even more … and really a big push to get solutions that work now and are effective and put them in place quickly.”

Natasha Porter, speaking about how the COVID impact is pushing digitization forward (Natasha):

Markets

Pharma feels strong across the board. Smaller and mid-sized companies are hiring EHS professionals, especially on the 2 coasts. I’ve learned that several successful pharma companies staff their EHS functions with a blend of full time and seconded consultant professionals. What are your thoughts regarding the ‘make vs. buy’ balance of EHS talent in your organization? I’m also still interested in the food sector. Food supply chains are going through tremendous strain during the COVID crisis. I learned more about the lack of synergy between the food service supply chain and the grocery supply chain on the webinar ‘The Ripple Effect: Food in the time of COVID-19’ in late May. 

Data Science

I can highly recommend the Data Science Fundamentals course on LinkedIn Learning, which I completed last month. If you want to be able to ask better questions of your data teams, this course could help you. Here are a few questions I recommend asking yourself:

1. How well does my strategy embrace using APIs to pull or push data from other services?
2. Are we exploring any of the next-level approaches like clustering or decomposition with our data? And are we using those methods to find outliers in the data that have meaning?
3. How aware are you of the public data in your field of interest and how you could ‘scrape’ that data to connect with your internal data and draw deeper insights? 

A great example of #3 is how Gensuite connected their Mapper application to the Johns Hopkins COVID database, allowing company-specific geographic trend analyses.

Tech: There is controversy over how to apply drone technology for COVID-19, but here is one example I came across, the Draganflyer Commander. I also spoke with a former colleague about augmented reality approaches to training and heard that AR tech was instrumental in helping train 4,000 field engineers in lieu of in-person training. Finally, for those of you who like visual idea mapping, check out Coggle. I saw it used in a ‘futures and foresight’ webinar last week and liked it’s application in quickly mapping out scenarios and outcomes.  

On remote work

• ‘Zoom fatigue’ is related to the need to stare at the camera for prolonged periods, which does not mimic every day interactions.
• Standing back from the camera in video calls and showing your upper body can reduce creepiness (think: camera a few feet away & stand up).
• Your strong ties you had pre-COVID held up, but your weak ties may have relaxed, which could have a longer term negative impact on innovation.

I picked up these learnings, and much more from ‘What If Working From Home Goes on … Forever?’. Author Clive Thompson wrote to me that “it was fascinating to report” and I hope you agree. 

Space

May 27/30/31, I invested probably 5-6 hours on NASA TV, watching the buildup to the scrubbed Wednesday launch, the launch itself on Saturday and then most intensely on Sunday morning as the Dragon capsule approached and then docked with the International Space Station. These images brought me back to my childhood hobby of building and launching model rockets. My best friend and his father, who was a high school physics teacher, introduced me to the craft and sparked my passion for science and math. It sure seems we’ve entered a new golden age of space travel and technology! 

For the EHS Pro’s

Circling back to some of the themes from the podcast, Intelex offered a webinar on ‘Streamlining Compliance: Using AI to solve pain points in your regulatory compliance efforts’. I learned for the first time about a tech startup, ehsAI, which is addressing a  $3B industry challenge of deconstructing compliance documents. They have created a deep neural networks approach to extract compliance information amidst the potential to dramatically cut down on the human effort required for complex permit management.