Active Incidents: Harvey Relief, Everyday AI, and Image Recognition

Your long weekend is nearly here. Hopefully you’ve setup some automation techniques to keep your Labor Day weekend actually labor-free. If not, you’ll learn some tricks at the bottom of this page. In the meantime, a quick recap of this week in technology:

Relief and Rescues Through Tech

Hurricane Harvey dumped trillions of gallons of rain along the Louisiana-Texas border, and most notably, in Houston. There isn’t much good news to report, as 30,000 people have been displaced from their homes, but the technology industry has been involved in some inspiring relief efforts.

For business software users, G2 Crowd is offering a $10 donation to the Red Cross relief effort in exchange for a quick review. If you’re a Samanage user, you can contribute here.

If you ever find yourself in a similar emergency situation, remember to use your phone and social media apps as resources. Hurricane victims posted their addresses on Twitter and were rescued. Organizations opened up as safe havens and posted their locations on Instagram. The Coast Guard and other emergency responders posted instructions that almost certainly saved lives.

AI Every Day, Every Where

In the coming weeks, months (and probably, years), you’ll hear a lot about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This revolution will impact almost every industry. Software as a service will be at the top of the list, as service providers start to use smart technology to automate, predict, and adapt to their customers’ needs and challenges. According to a Cowen and Company survey, 81% of IT leaders have plans to invest in AI.

Eventually, big picture challenges with AI will include government regulation, military use, and its impact on the job market. For now, on a smaller scale, this is a decent look at challenges and possibilities for software companies and developers.

The immediate benefit for users is that software is going to improve exponentially. Products will become more responsive to your needs, will collect (and analyze) data on their own, and will help you anticipate problems before they occur.

The Change Management Award Goes to…

Speaking of software analyzing data, Salesforce has introduced an AI-powered image recognition feature in it’s Marketing Cloud. If your business is marketing on social media, it’s likely that pictures indicating your potential customers’ preferences currently go undetected. You can monitor for text in social content. You can monitor for followers and clicks. You cannot monitor for images, because until now, current marketing solutions didn’t have that capability. Salesforce is hoping this technology will open a whole new world of marketing given the amount of social media content driven by pictures and video.

ITSM links:

• The benefits of an Automated Service Catalog
• IT Chronicles: A step-by-step guide to change management
• SLA creation and tracking

Enjoy your long weekend. Hopefully you will leverage some new technology to hold down the fort while you light the grill!