A Year in Review: 2019 Tech Recap

About this episode

DECEMBER 6, 2019

Just like that 2019 is almost over! A lot happened this year in the digital world of tech and cybersecurity. The rise of new technologies, ideas, and cyber-crime. In this episode of the GEEK FREAKS PODCAST, Ron, Luis, and Kris discuss what was predicted in tech versus what actually happened for the year. Tune in to hear what was a hit or miss for technology in 2019.

MEET THE GEEK FREAKS

RON HARRIS

VICE PRESIDENT

15 years in the industry.
Enjoys spending time with his family, riding his Harley, and finding time to sleep.
Fun fact: Ron broke both of his arms.
He's a simple person, enjoys work, but also enjoys being alone reading a book or learning something new. Loves candy DOTs!

LUIS SANCHEZ

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Bachelors in Graphic Design and Film, Video, Media Studies from Western Michigan University.
Certified in Inbound Marketing and YouTube Creative Essentials.
Has experience in branding/identity, web design, video editing, motion graphics, and digital cameras.
Likes dubstep, tacos, video games and nerd culture.
In his free time, you can find him making art, exercising, or just hanging with friends.

Kris Peck

SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR

Bachelors in Information Technology from Central Michigan University
Certified in Networking and various software administration
Has experience in scripting for Powershell, hardware and software troubleshooting, inventory management, and MDT automation
Likes seafood, video games, Magic the Gathering and other nerd stuff.

VIEW TRANSCRIPT >

Transcript Episode #15

Ron: (00:00) Welcome to the Geek Freaks Podcast. Your go to destination for answers to the most crucial business technology questions every business owner needs to hear.

Music: (00:09) [Intro Music]

Ron: (00:19) Today's episode is a year in review of 2019 as we get ready to wrap up this year and just, oh, a month.

Luis: (00:25) Yeah, a little over a month.

Ron: (00:27) I got Luis Sanchez in the studio with us and Kris Peck. How's it going guys?

Luis: (00:32) Woot Woot.

Ron: (00:32) Did you just woot woot?

Luis: (00:32) Yeah.

Ron: (00:34) All right. It's Thanksgiving, I'll allow it.

Luis: (00:37) Turkey days tomorrow, man.

Ron: (00:38) I know.

Luis: (00:38) I'm excited.

Ron: (00:40) I don't know if I'm that excited for it, but it will be Thanksgiving food.

Kris: (00:44) I'm excited for the ham that they're going to have.

Ron: (00:46) Ham?

Kris: (00:47) Yeah.

Ron: (00:47) That's not a Thanksgiving thing.

Luis: (00:48) Go ham or go home.

Ron: (00:49) Turkey bro.

Kris: (00:50) Why not both?

Luis: (00:51) I'm not a turkey fan.

Ron: (00:51) You guys do both.

Kris: (00:52) Yeah.

Ron: (00:53) That's a savage. That's good. I like that.

Kris: (00:55) That's the way to do.

Ron: (00:55) We were talking about eating turkey skin the other day and how it's super bad for you.

Luis: (01:00) You know they sell those at KFC now, like straight up skins. Deep fried skins. I know. That's disgusting. That sounds like you're going to get high cholesterol.

Ron: (01:09) Um, so, all right, Luis, let's jump in. Give me these stats. Give me this data. Let's talk about it.

Luis: (01:14) Okay, so some cool stats that I found for 2019. Most of these are from Statista. Um, first one is about tech spending. Did you know that worldwide spending on technology reached 3 trillion and $360 billion this 2019? Just think about that for a sec. I think there's 7 billion people in the world, so that's just kind of insane to me. Pre internet, there are 4.4 billion active internet users worldwide. That's 58% of the global population.

Ron: (01:41) I think to me that's more shocking than the spend.

Kris: (01:44) I'm surprised it's not a little higher.

Luis: (01:46) 58% of the global population.

Kris: (01:48) That does, that has internet.

Luis: (01:50) Yeah.

Kris: (01:51) I'm surprised it's not higher at this point.

Luis: (01:53) I mean, yeah, there's a lot of like, like there's a lot of like poor countries and people with not enough money though. So I kinda, I dunno, like I think it evens out a little bit, but 58 is over half. That's still insane to me. I don't know.

Kris: (02:07) Just think about how much the internet is used on a regular basis and like a country like the United States, and then think about it, the fact that there are countries that luckily don't have internet or they're people that don't have internet and how much it's in our lives.

Luis: (02:22) Right.

Ron: (02:23) That's also a bad thing.

Kris: (02:24) Yeah, it's true.

Ron: (02:26) You know what I mean?

Kris: (02:27) Which part?

Ron: (02:27) The internet every day in our lives. Like, I dunno, it's just the old guy in me. Like, I love it. I love the internet. It's great. I could see whatever I want when I want problems is what, yeah, there's a lot of issues with the internet sometimes.

Luis: (02:42) Okay moving on to data. Uh, the revenue of big data and business analytics reach 189.1 billion this year, 2019.

Ron: (02:51) So every bit of information that everybody has of us that they're selling and moving around and capitalizing on that, they've made $1 billion...

Luis: (02:59) Billions and billions of dollars.

Ron: (03:00) So we're the product and they've made billions of dollars off of us and we have no say. Cool, thanks. Face-time. Myspace. My space. I'm going to blame Myspace.

Luis: (03:09) Yeah, that's really, that's really weird. Okay. Internet of things.

Ron: (03:14) You're right. I didn't even think about that. They did start it. I'm glad they're nothing anymore. Myspace.

Kris: (03:20) Now they're just like a music site.

Ron: (03:21) What they should've been.

Luis: (03:22) I can't even log into that anymore. It's so annoying. All right. Internet of things, the number of connected wearable devices in the world will reach 1.1 billion before the end of 2020.

Ron: (03:33) So they're saying watches.

Luis: (03:35) Yeah. Anything wearable.

Kris: (03:36) Watches. Fitbits. All that stuff.

Ron: (03:38) Fitbit just got, there was a bidding war. I was listening to a stock thing this morning and were they said that uh, Google and Facebook were having a bidding war for Fitbit.

Kris: (03:48) Yeah.

Ron: (03:48) Facebook lost cause they were 5 cents cheaper per share.

Luis: (03:52) Ooof.

Ron: (03:53) But it doesn't matter. They're all just going to use it for bad stuff anyway.

Luis: (03:56) I mean like, um, smartwatches I think are more popular now, especially with like Apple watches and like all that stuff. So like, I mean it's not, I mean obviously the Google glass didn't really stick.

Kris: (04:08) Well Google glass never got released.

Ron: (04:09) Is it the privacy issue? Right.

Kris: (04:11) I think it was privacy and just that, I don't think they ever finished it. I'm sure they're working on it and some backend part of Google that hasn't shut it down yet.

Luis: (04:18) Yeah, no, I'm sure they want to keep it. Like it's still a cool concept.

Ron: (04:21) I had the first Apple watch and I gave it to my wife because I didn't, it was annoying to me.

Luis: (04:26) Really?

Ron: (04:26) Yeah. Because my phone's in my pocket. So like the biggest problem that drove me nuts is I'm presenting for sales or something and my watch is just bing bing and even though you can make it not make noise, it's still flashes. It's still up in your grill. I'm sure they made that better, but it's just then you're connected to everything.

Luis: (04:44) Yeah. So I mean, I know you found some cool um predictions here.

Ron: (04:48) Yeah, so let's, yeah, let's talk about what didn't happen. So the, this is the article I found was from 2018 projecting what, predicting what was going to happen this year. So first one was 5G becomes a new standard.

Luis: (05:01) I don't think it has. No, not at all. Not at all.

Ron: (05:04) I think there's, there's health concerns with it now they're saying...

Luis: (05:06) Yeah, I was talking to my roommate about it that last night actually, he, he was like, we were talking about how Trump wants to push 5g forward. It was, um, but a lot of people are kind of saying that the wavelength, the, that 5g uses could be bad for a health. Um, surprisingly, which I think, I think that's been debunked for the most part. I really don't. I mean, if you think about how many, how many wavelengths that are around us with Bluetooth and stuff already. Like I don't, I really doubt that, but it's actually a really big concern. I don't know. Like what do you think are we gonna die from 5G?

Kris: (05:42) I think 5G is still a ways off right now. It's only in real big cities. Like when I was in D.C. they had it, I think they had it in Vegas...

Luis: (05:52) I think they have it in Detroit.

Ron: (05:54) World traveler, Kris Peck.

Kris: (05:56) This is just a year of traveling for me. I think it's still a few years off at the rate that they add new cities.

Luis: (06:05) Right.

Kris: (06:05) And I don't think it's really that much of a benefit over the current one from what I've used of it.

Ron: (06:10) The issue too is that it's shorter range, so they have to put more of them up.

Kris: (06:14) Put more towers.

Ron: (06:15) And that's what like, so in Metro cities, on every lamp post or every other lamppost, there'll be receivers and transceivers and they're trying to get around that. I don't know if it's like going to burn a hole in our brain, but I just, I just think aesthetically in what they're trying to do. Like in our city, if you drive out by my house, there's a giant tree. It's not a giant tree. It's a um, cell phone tower. And they can't do that with that technology because it's not as far. So now we're going to have boxes on every light bulb. So yeah, I would say that this was a swing and a miss. So that's all I'm gonna. I'm gonna say miss 5g didn't get everywhere. I know they're trying a prediction to GDRP sparks regulation across the internet. I think. Yes, I was going to say, I think this is also a miss. I think GDRP did great for the European union, but I don't think it has done as much as they expected for us.

Kris: (07:06) Yeah, there really hasn't been much in the way of internet regulation in the U.S. over the past year. It's mostly stuff that's gotten shut down or people that want it, but opposition to it and certain political groups.

Ron: (07:21) 63% of people believe that social media has too much. Um, power. Like...

Luis: (07:28) I mean, don't you?

Ron: (07:29) And then 57% believe search engines have too much power.

Kris: (07:34) To a degree. I could see that as well, depending on their algorithm and how it works. Yeah, I mean, I know there's lots of concerns about how Google and presents search traffic as this is the top search. Whether or not it's true that...

Luis: (07:51) Exactly. That's what I'm thinking too, like working in marketing, like in order to like improve our SEO. Like I do think about that sometimes. Like what exactly do they want us to like find cause is this like actual like as much of the SEO work as we do, like search engine optimization I don't know...

Kris: (08:10) If it actually matters.

Luis: (08:11) Yeah. Exactly. That's what I'm, I don't know.

Ron: (08:13) I think we're too much of a dollar figure for the U.S. to really do too much with protecting our data on us.

Luis: (08:20) I agree. I mean with that number.

Ron: (08:22) Billions of dollars.

Luis: (08:23) 189.1 billion this year.

Ron: (08:25) Is being spent on our personal information. That's crazy. And that goes back to the bigger, I mean, we've talked to it on a previous podcast and I, there was a commercial about it, but like my iPhone tracks my steps. My iPhone, if I had a, uh, the watch on it will track my heartbeat. All this medical history stored on my phone that now Apple controls or has access to, or third party apps have access to. Like we're, we are the currency. And I think it's, it's crazy to me that that's it's gotten, they know what I like, they know what I watch, they know how long I watch it, they know what kind of music I listen to. Like even Spotify, like you get personalized playlists because you listen to something.

Luis: (09:05) The 2019 one's coming out.

Ron: (09:07) Oh yeah.

Luis: (09:09) Most listened to artists.

Ron: (09:10) It's going to be the, it's going to be my 2018 playlist. That's pretty much what I listened to. Um, but then, so then the next prediction was U.S. tech regulations ramp up against the big big businesses, Google, Facebook, all that other stuff. I'm going to say that's a miss as well.

Kris: (09:25) It's a miss. But it's one of those things that's definitely being talked about a lot, um, by a lot of groups actually. That there, that Google and Facebook might have too much power specifically those two more than any others.

Ron: (09:40) Yeah. But it's, yeah, I think it's gonna come down to capitalism and I think it's gonna come down to the almighty dollar.

Kris: (09:44) Like, well, let's see who lobbies harder.

Ron: (09:46) And who's the government to come in and step in and say, you need to break apart your company. That's not what we're founded on. But I think pressure would allow them that to happen.

Kris: (09:54) Yeah.

Ron: (09:56) So yeah, I think they do have too much and I think we, but that's our fault. We voluntarily give up too much. So we're, where is it?

Luis: (10:04) That's literally our fault.

Ron: (10:05) We're the dumdums. I mean we do it because we want to use Gmail. Yeah, we'd do it because we won't use Facebook for free. Um, next prediction I guess the other like regulatory issues, whereas the election transparency that came up, data transparency and cybersecurity, net neutrality, uh, trade and immigration, antitrust and cryptocurrency, which two or two or three of those have already gone out the window. Like cryptocurrencies now are a failed state and they're trying to get it back.

Kris: (10:32) And cyber security is a whole other thing. Like a, I think what was the one I recently saw Interpol was trying to ban encryption in some ways but Interpol like the...

Ron: (10:44) Yeah, because they can't get into the stuff.

Kris: (10:45) Yeah. So they want to like try to make regulation against encryption on cell phones because they can't track criminals. Yeah. Through the encryption.

Ron: (10:57) So yeah, I don't know.

Luis: (10:58) So like the more we try, secure data doesn't even matter anymore.

Ron: (11:01) No, it does, but they want, they want a backdoor in. So if they're like, I want to know where Luis Sanchez is they can find you.

Kris: (11:08) When that Apple, that iPhone and the FBI wanted a backdoor and Apple told them no. Or in some cases companies have given them access.

Ron: (11:21) Yeah. A lot of big companies have...

Luis: (11:23) Such an iffy...

Ron: (11:25) Yeah. It's shady because it would be if there was transparency to it, like, Hey, I'm a firewall maker and we allow the government in make your buying choice. The problem is is there's no choice. It's just we let the government have access to all your stuff. Like there's been, they found out like, so when you buy new tech devices, there's labels on it for warranty information. People found out that they were being cut, chips were being put in and traffic was being monitored and then the label is being replaced. It's crazy!

Kris: (11:53) Yup.

Ron: (11:54) A prediction for blockchain becomes basic, another miss.

Kris: (11:57) I haven't heard much about, ya know heard the talk about blockchain every so often but still not that big.

Ron: (12:07) I think in certain industries it's, it's doing its thing.

Kris: (12:09) Financial is probably the biggest one for blockchain.

Ron: (12:12) But it comes down to like that crypto currency situation where they were really trying to shoehorn it in and then make it mainstream. And there's a lot of grey areas with cryptocurrency. So I think blockchain is getting to be the bastard child of it. Uh prediction five digital transformation transcends the I.T. department. I think that's a miss too.

Kris: (12:33) Yeah.

Luis: (12:34) I mean I think it's more like definitely more apparent now. But, um, I think for the most part, people who are more educated in like the technology usually, um, are more trusted to do the purchases and the buyings and the budgets and all that.

Ron: (12:50) Yeah. I mean, essentially what they were saying is that the, um, digital information is outside of now I.T. so now they're saying that that's going to be a bigger part of the business, whether it's AI or like...

Kris: (13:01) C level isn't that one about how like C level employees are more knowledgeable about the information as well?

Ron: (13:09) I don't know.

Kris: (13:10) They can promote it better, but...

Ron: (13:12) I don't, I can't say it's a miss or hit because it's such like a weird thing. Um, so that one's ne, we'll say neutral. So, so far we have a bunch of misses in one neutral.

Kris: (13:22) There's not a ton of change.

Ron: (13:25) AI fights, fights, AI in the cyber world. So essentially they're saying that we're going to use AI to fight other AI, whether it's cyber criminals or cybersecurity bla or ransomware or whatever. I think that's a hit. I think this year they successfully, at least it released enough next gen antivirus and EDR that yeah, utilize the cloud and AI that I would say this has been pretty successful.

Kris: (13:46) Yeah, there's been a ton that got really popular this year and have been marketing everywhere. So I can definitely see that that one being a hit.

Ron: (13:56) Yeah. Some of them are just got bought up for a couple billion and I mean there's, it's a bigger issue and it's not a lot of people have that technology, so it's fantastic to see that that's getting there. Tech companies work to address the talent gap. Uh, this is an issue. This is a big issue for our industry, right. Like unemployment for tech is 0% in Michigan right now. So now we have not enough workers because now there's certain, so many different caveats and skillsets that it's hard to get somebody in.

Luis: (14:28) Yeah. I was looking at a study from CompTIA for the 2019 like workforce or tech workforce specifically and overall in the U.S. the most, um, the people that are mostly are studying tech are the developers, uh, like I.T. Support and stuff like that is number third. And especially in Michigan it's the same amount from Michigan and.

Ron: (14:49) Number three.

Luis: (14:49) Is number three and number third [laughs].

Ron: (14:53) I was just just going to let it go. But number third.

Luis: (14:55) It's crazy to me that like most of the people who they go into tech are developers and like, I mean as much as you need developers, like...

Kris: (15:04) I think there's a lot of that is the push for automation.

Luis: (15:07) Right.

Kris: (15:07) A lot of that requires those big dev ops resources and a lot of it's also the change from a lot of sustainment positions sort of becoming more of a dev ops role rather than just managing the equipment. They're also developing software and things.

Ron: (15:21) Well, I think they're trying to get it to a state where, not to a state, but there there's been a lot of people scared that robots are going to take over their job and it's slowly but surely happening in some levels. I'm not going to say you can replace an entire I.T. department by AI, but there's not a lot of people going into hardware anymore because hardware is now being handled by software and networks are being handled by software.

Luis: (15:40) For the most part everyone wants automation anyway. Like if you can schedule things, you can do stuff like that. Yeah, it's a lot easier for the workers.

Ron: (15:48) We went, I was at Disney a week ago and I was on the bus with a couple older couples and my family and another younger family and they were the bus drivers complaining because they're doing AI with bus routes so they can service more people. And the car was super divided, like the, the older generation was like, it's that they're taking away your jobs and you know, making it more effective and more. That's what I was thinking, but I'm saying it's not going to be personable, blah, blah, blah, like all the stuff that we really don't care about. Like I just want to get on a bus and get to a point to point b. They don't help you, like they don't help you load a stroller up. They don't, they just drive you. So however that works works. But then they went into, you know you're going to lose. They're not, it's because they're not paying, they don't have to pay. That's a onetime spend. So they brought up all the issues and the lady was like, well this other lady across from me was like, just interjected herself in the conversation and she said they're doing it because the cost of tickets drive up because they have to have a hundred bus drivers a day on every shift and like tried to explain it why that would make business sense to do it and they're like, nah, they're just taken away. Robots are taking away their jobs. And I was like, Oh wait, wait, wait.

Luis: (17:01) Are they self driving?

Ron: (17:02) Yeah, they're going to, they're going to be.

Luis: (17:03) Oh they're going to be. That is so cool to me personally.

Ron: (17:06) They're saying the bus driver was mad because people don't want to get on the bus.

Luis: (17:09) Right.

Ron: (17:09) Because there's not a smiling face. And I was like, well you can pay somebody $10 a hour.

Luis: (17:13) Are you going to Disney to ride a bus though. Like...

Ron: (17:16) And that's what I think the biggest to go to, to go to the park a day is like $150 so if they can do anything to make that more cost effective or a better experience, I think they are going to do that.

Luis: (17:26) I agree.

Ron: (17:26) And I'm not saying that the bus drivers are, you know, you're going to have to have bus drivers, but it's no different than like a, the fast food workers that are were like, we want a $20 an hour minimum wage and then McDonald's and Taco Bell, we're like, okay, we'll put kiosk out front. You know what I mean? That's becoming more of a thing and it's more of a...

Luis: (17:44) Does anyone even use those like, to be honest?

Ron: (17:46) I don't like using them.

Luis: (17:47) I never, I go straight to the person.

Kris: (17:50) I've tried using them, but they never have what I want. But it's on the menu.

Luis: (17:53) Are you a picky eater?

Kris: (17:55) No. If you go to taco bell I usually get like the $5 box cause it's a great value.

Luis: (17:59) Yeah. No I agree.

Ron: (18:00) Cost-effective.

Kris: (18:01) But the thing is is that sometimes those kiosks don't have the box.

Ron: (18:05) Yeah. So that's like the, the the big, then you start to get into this. Like AI is cool but it's not where it needs to be to like displace people yet. So everybody just needs to calm down a little bit and be like, okay robots aren't going to take our job right now. Maybe in 10 years, but right now we're all okay. But they're going to like big corporations like that are still going to continue what they have to do to lower their expenses and increase the, you know, the value or quality that they bring to us as consumers.

Luis: (18:30) And even then 10 years from now, they think about all that's happened in 10 years. In the past 10 years. I feel like a lot will change not just in tech.

Ron: (18:38) Well think about like even in our business, we used to have to hand count computers and do sit down at every computer to do inventory now and we run a tool that takes 30 minutes and it tells us everything that's on the computer, how old it is. Like that's automation, right?

Luis: (18:52) Isn't that for the better though?

Ron: (18:53) Yeah, but pretty much all automation is supposed to be for the bed rate, but it's not like, you know, Nick and Thony were like, nope, can't do it. It's going to take going to get, you're going to get rid of my job. And it's like, no, it's to create efficiency in what you're doing. So I think that's going to be interesting. But the talent gap is hard right now. Even from a hardware desktop, you know what we traditionally could find people for is harder because they don't, they're all going into programming. They're all going into to different avenues. Security's hot right now, so a lot of people are going to security. So that's going to be the teaching. Everybody wanted to be a teacher in the late two thousands and they all moved like to the West coast to Colorado and stuff, and then all my friends came back because there was no teaching jobs out there. You know what I mean? It's going to be that thing. We're going to have a saturated market with talent in certain areas and then the market will catch up in a roux do. It will be fine again. But that's what I, my neph, Nope, what is he? My stepbrother, my brother, he wanted to, he's going into cybersecurity and he's like, I dunno if I should do it. Like these classes are so full. And I was like, yeah dude, it's hot right now. Like you're getting paid good money. So do it. A prediction eight China concerns grow sharply. Yeah, I think that's still going. That was a hit that's still going on.

Luis: (20:05) Can you repeat that and predicts growth?

Ron: (20:06) No, grow sharp. The concerns of China grwo sharply. Okay. So that's more about the tariffs and how the tension is going to rise on each side, whether it's tech related or us, how it's going to affect the stock market. And I think that's...

Kris: (20:19) Yeah, that's pretty consistent over the last year. Even now, even even after they occasionally have a truce in the tariff where they're like okay about it and then something changes. It's definitely a hit.

Ron: (20:33) Volatile.

Kris: (20:34) Yeah. Very volatile.

Ron: (20:36) Number nine, social good becomes a greater part of the business equation.

Luis: (20:41) Um, I feel like in marketing definitely I think it's like pretty prominent with, um, social issues for like a lot of businesses to like do their marketing in that, like steer it that way.

Kris: (20:52) So I agree that it's a hit, but I also think it's a miss because the thing is, is they only do that marketing for countries that are pro those social issues.

Luis: (21:03) Yeah. I mean...

Kris: (21:04) So like if you look at Blizzard Entertainment a few months ago where they had the...

Luis: (21:10) Oh yeah.

Kris: (21:12) They had a guy does it...

Ron: (21:14) Was it the Hong Kong thing?

Kris: (21:15) Yeah. They had a guy make a comment about Hong Kong on a stream. They banned him, took away all his earnings, and then they banned both of the casters who allowed him to make a comment. And that was a huge firestorm. And they made this big apology at their convention a few weeks ago. But then they also made posts like Chinese social media being like, we swear China's the best. We didn't mean for any of this to happen.

Luis: (21:43) Well it was the whole issue was that it was, they um, China wanted to get like information from, from the streamer or what did he say?

Kris: (21:51) Like, no, so he made a comment about the protest protest. So he got banned and so Blizzard afterwards, like we swear this was, uh, about China. This is our policy. When they went on social media in China on whatever that one was called, Weibo or whatever, and said like, China is the best. We didn't mean for any of this to happen. We'll punish them accordingly.

Ron: (22:15) Well, cause a lot of their revenue comes from China. Right.

Kris: (22:17) So that's the thing with those companies that...

Ron: (22:19) The social good is a social good one that affects the pocketbook.

Kris: (22:22) Yeah, exactly.

Ron: (22:23) I think it goes to the culture that's just like...

Kris: (22:27) I like that they push social good in the U.S. but I also dislike that it's all about money at the end. They only do it because they, it's...

Ron: (22:36) It would be really interesting to see like to have, this is a real talk about like blockchain to be able to see where those donation dollars go through blockchain.

Kris: (22:44) That would definitely...

Ron: (22:45) I mean that would be the transparency that we'd want blockchain for it to be like, Oh I've donated $1,000 to Susan G. Komen. Where does that end up? Right?

Kris: (22:54) Yeah.

Ron: (22:55) Does it end up in somebody's pocket or does it end up towards research? Does it end up on marketing? I mean there are non profits so you can pull all their stuff and a lot of them, you know, it's a smaller percentage that you would think would go towards research or go towards development or go towards a small...

Kris: (23:08) Yeah, I think that example specifically, there's a lot of it, a controversy for them about where their money goes specifically.

Ron: (23:14) I used to donate a lot of money to them.

Luis: (23:16) There's even like controversy with like even Facebook donations because have you guys heard about that?

Ron: (23:20) No.

Luis: (23:21) Like, you know, like when it's your birthday, you do like donations through Facebook. Um...

Kris: (23:26) I don't use Facebook.

Ron: (23:27) Oh word. I'm going to start using Facebook. I'll go, I'll sign back up me get my donations on my birthday.

Luis: (23:33) Donations for like charities.

Ron: (23:34) Oh so I can say it's my birthday and be like, if you want to give to the SPCA, happy birthday Ron.

Luis: (23:40) I dunno, there's like controversy about that, controversy about that. Like people aren't sure where that money's actually going.

Kris: (23:47) I can see that.

Luis: (23:48) Yeah.

Kris: (23:50) That's definitely, I can see you like where does the money go Facebook?

Ron: (23:54) Well that's why we need blockchain.

Kris: (23:56) Yeah, I mean I think all of the transparency...

Ron: (23:58) We used it for the weirdest and then we're like, no, it's not going to work. But it's like there's so many good, like I don't care where my hamburger comes from, from McDonald's. I don't care about that. But if I'm donating, if I'm doing, you know, social good, I would love to see how that money's impacting...

Luis: (24:12) I think it's pretty important.

Ron: (24:13) Like the local community. Like if I went to Kalamazoo, downtown Kalamazoo and I was like, Hey, I'm going to give you $5,000 I'm never gonna, you're never going to know how that five grand got used. General fund. Does it go towards social call? Yeah, that'd be great. But that's where blockchain comes in.

Kris: (24:27) That's where blockchain needs to like push.

Ron: (24:30) It needs to be used. Um, 10 co coop, coopetition, coopetition becomes a must.

Kris: (24:39) You mean cooperation?

Ron: (24:39) It's cooperation with your competition.

Kris: (24:43) Okay.

Luis: (24:44) Oh my God.

Kris: (24:46) That's a new one.

Luis: (24:47) Coopetition.

Ron: (24:48) Coopetition, C O. O. P. E. T. I. T. I. O. N.

Luis: (24:53) I mean, I dunno, is it, do you think that's a thing.

Ron: (24:55) Hell no, I mean not for us like a business our size.

Luis: (24:56) That's what I was thinking. I was like, I don't think so at all. Like how, I mean.

Ron: (25:02) I guess there are a lot of like are people that listen to it, so like insurance brokers or insurance companies are going to be like, Hey look, other local insurance company, let's do this event...

Luis: (25:10) Even in the big companies. Like, I mean, I guess maybe like big tech, like Facebook and Google. Do they tear like team up for stuff?

Ron: (25:19) Yeah, I think that for those greater social causes.

Luis: (25:22) But I don't think they're like...

Ron: (25:25) I could see at that level. Right.

Luis: (25:26) That's a bad example too. They're different. They're different. Um, companies like entirely.

Ron: (25:31) But that's what they're saying like Facebook to to, I mean, if you look at it at global scale, yes. We need the Tesla to team up with the Facebook to team up with this. So we can, we can do great things. We need to put internet to these 46% of countries that don't have it. Or we need, you know, we need to, there's a YouTube guy that's planting 200 million trees or something. Yeah. So he's saying like, I need cooperation from Elon Musk, from Mark Zuckerberg to all donate this money so we can get trees planted because we're killing trees at a rapid rate. That would be coopetition, right? On a bigger scale. But like on, on like a SMB level on now, I don't think that's a thing. I'm not going to go to one of our competitors and be like, Hey, let's do this together. We can split the profits together maybe on huge projects.

Luis: (26:20) But yeah, I was gonna say there's projects and stuff that um, maybe certain industries are looking to like maybe like social issues. Like you said, that's the I see maybe even SMBs kind of teaming up a little bit. Um...

Ron: (26:33) Yeah. But like so no, cause it wouldn't be coopetition. It would just be cooperation. Like if I went to the bank and was like, Hey, every time you get a new business you hand out a business loan out one of our flyer for manage I.T. services. That would be cooperation. Right? Not coopetition.

Luis: (26:48) It's not your competitor.

Ron: (26:49) Yeah. So they're saying the benefits of coopetition. Coopertition coopertition I don't know. I can't say I'm going to say coopetition cause that's, that sounds better. Product and service innovation, exposure to new markets, access to complimentary resources and technology, economies of scale, increased selling opportunities and supply train, supply chain streamlining.

Kris: (27:13) Yeah.

Ron: (27:14) Maybe. Maybe in the enterprise.

Luis: (27:16) Yeah.

Kris: (27:17) I don't really see much of that for us. A lot of that stuff is definitely very industry specific.

Ron: (27:25) I'm going to say that is a neutral.

Luis: (27:27) Yeah.

Ron: (27:27) Neutral.

Kris: (27:28) Yeah.

Ron: (27:28) Neutral.

Luis: (27:29) Neutral.

Ron: (27:29) So we only had like one hit and I forgot what it was.

Kris: (27:33) It was uh, China.

Ron: (27:35) Yeah, China, China. Everything else was missed or was a neutral.

Luis: (27:39) Or it's still going on like 5G still going on. It's not like a, like...

Kris: (27:43) It's a miss that it didn't like get as big as they thought it was going, but it's like, it's still, they're still trying. Same with blockchain.

Ron: (27:49) To go back to the Chinese tariffs, isn't there a big deal like with what the tariffs in Huawei or whatever it is, F big giant 5G company that was like, we need to come in to do 5G and we're like, you also spy on your users. Yeah. So there's like a lot of that going on right now.

Luis: (28:06) I mean, if it does, I really hope it doesn't give us cancer.

Ron: (28:10) Bro. Any this, these LED lights might, you know what I mean?

Luis: (28:13) Everything does. I like, if we die, we die.

Ron: (28:17) That would be cool if that technology ever came out would be like you have cancer because of the LED lights that you once sat under. I mean, I'm sure after a certain amount of time they're going to tell us, but we'll be dead and gone in the dirt when they figure out something's bad for us.

Kris: (28:28) Yeah.

Ron: (28:29) Like coffee, melatonin, you know, like cigarettes.

Luis: (28:33) Are you telling me coffee causes melatonin?

Ron: (28:35) No. Coffee. Melatonin. I'm just trying to think of everything I put in my body in the last 24 hours.

Luis: (28:39) Wait. Yeah. It was like melatonin.

Ron: (28:40) Turkey, what did I have for dinner.

Luis: (28:43) Oh, I thought you meant melanoma for a sec.

Ron: (28:45) Melanoma is cancer.

Luis: (28:46) No, I was like melatonin, no I sleep a lot. I don't need that.

Ron: (28:51) Um, yeah. So again, those were the tech predictions that we looked up and the great stats Luis put together. So I've, thanks guys. Uh, we went a little longer than we traditionally do, but we kinda had a lot to talk about. It's a good conversation.

Luis: (29:02) A lot in 2019.

Ron: (29:03) Ooh, 2019. So good bye 2019 I think this is, we have one more podcast in 2019.

Luis: (29:08) Yeah, our, um, Insurance Hot Seat. So stay tuned.

Ron: (29:12) And then we're out and we in 2020 baby new year's here.

Luis: (29:16) New year, new us.

Ron: (29:18) No.

Luis: (29:19) No?

Ron: (29:19) New year same us.

Luis: (29:20) Oh.

Ron: (29:21) I'm not being a new person. I'm not going to shave my beard or anything. But you go through like a transformation, like a beautiful butterfly.

Luis: (29:28) Every new, every new years December is my birth month, bro. This is my transformation.

Ron: (29:33) Is this is your golden birthday?

Luis: (29:35) No, it was my 21st was my golden birthday. It was a terrible terrible birthday. No one showed up to my party.

Ron: (29:44) We don't have to do it. That's a lot to unpack right now. I will save that for a, when the mics are off. Well, appreciate it guys. Thanks so much for listening to the Geek Freaks Podcast. We'll talk to you soon.

Music: (29:56) [Outro music]