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arthurhwalker · 4 years

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Lenovo TechWorld 2019

Disclosure: I attended Lenovo TechWorld 2019 in Beijing as Lenovo’s Guest. I sat in a super fan / brand advocate seat, and attended in that capacity. Lenovo asks that, as part of my participation, I follow all FTC disclosure laws relative to sponsored content. All opinions are my own.

Disclosure: I consumed the majority of Lenovo TechWorld 2019 via an earbud, translators working hard to turn Chinese into English on the other end. Something may have gotten lost in the translation, and I’ve tried my best to get clarity in those cases where I suspect that happened.

Lenovo HQ Tour - Day Zero

The tour wasn’t what I was expecting. It was definitely a marketing experience, designed to influence influencers and the media. It was well produced, had something for everyone, and a little more.

I write extensively about identity and digital identity in my speculative science fiction series. I’ve read Derek Parfit’s work, and Christine M. Korsgaard’s “Self-Constitution”. The philosophical implications of identity are something I’ve explored in great depth. To that end, Lenovo may be one of a precious few tech companies looking to empower (as opposed to exploit) the user, via their identity.

In philosophy, whenever someone is merely a means in the process of your decision making, you’re probably a jerk, or in the process of acting like one. Lenovo sees a person’s identity as more than a means to create markets for themselves, and is looking through the eyes of the user for how they would relate to potential markets instead.

When I stepped into Lenovo’s unmanned employee store, using my face, it sort of hit home what they were wanting to do. The store had a curious assortment of snacks, food, and drinks. Were the contents curated based on the patronage? I wished I’d asked, but I suspect that’s the cases. Instead of a marketing edifice trying desperately to contrive demand, the store felt more like the corner market that served a neighborhood.

It was an odd sensation to have in a high tech store that didn’t have personnel, but still had personality. That of the folks that shopped there, perhaps? There was the quick bite to eat for lunch, necessities people might grab to avoid a trip to the market on the way home, and the afternoon snack. Nothing was arranged to market the goods in a specific way. It felt more like a community pantry that had contents aggregated over time, to suit the needs of the patrons.

I haven’t had that sensation since I was a young person, standing in the corner market of an old neighborhood where some of my extended family dwelled. That’s where the familiarity ended, though.

In China, commerce is just handled differently. On the outside, it feels a little impersonal to use WeChat or Alipay on your phone to make a transaction. However, I saw the flip side, while I was shopping at Lenovo’s pop up store at the TechWorld venue. They had a Lenovo Legion backpack I wanted (well, needed. It was red!), but I didn’t have WeChat set up to pay, or enough cash.

Nevertheless, the young woman helping me was determined to make the transaction happen. The other employees gathered around, and we talked it over. In the end, she became the handler in the exchange. I gave her the money using Alipay, and she used her WeChat to complete the transaction at the point of sale. This sort of economic decentralization happens at the user level in China.

Having based my book series around a global fiscal collapse, it was interesting to see how Lenovo (and to some degree, China) is making sure the future I’m somewhat afraid of, never happens. Where technology doesn’t reach all the way to the ground, to the common person, it will generally either fail at best, or at worst, exploit the common person.

There were other demonstrations of this notion in the home, and workplace, throughout the tour. The extreme care taken to make sure Lenovo’s products don’t interfere with the user, or their other devices shed light on why I keep buying from them. From a very high developmental level, Lenovo’s products put the user first.

TechWorld - Day 1: Commercial

During the commercial keynote, there was a lot of marketing babble, buzzwords, and hype. It was hard to pick out the gems, the bits that really will resonate in the industry. This is to be expected whenever a company goes large on the stage to sell themselves. This isn't criticism of Lenovo, it's a realization of all that is at stake.

Lenovo wants to change China, and by virtue of that, influence change in the rest of the world.

Lenovo has realized what many companies in the West have not. Decentralizing processes, beside transparent data acquisition, has tremendous potential. This is particularly true for countries with large populations. Each person represents an opportunity to create or serve particular markets.

The assumption is that automation will take jobs from humans, and give them to robots. That edge computing will make people in the field obsolete. I don’t think that is the case. Lenovo has seen that the optimization of processes is one of the last ways technology can improve the profits of companies, while helping preserve the environment. We don’t need less people and more robots, we need more efficient processes underlying the work done by both man and machine.

This is marketable both for companies that want to go greener by reducing waste, while saving money on power consumption. The sum of that vision rests with edge computing built on system agnostic, easy to produce hardware, with software to match. So that data acquisition isn't reliant on crafting new products for each industry.

During the first day I wondered if this approach would trickle down to the regular consumer, with edge computing coming to the home. People already struggle to trust that technology in their homes. Lenovo understands that anxiety; from toggles on webcams, to the hardware switches on microphone-equipped smart home devices.

They intend to start building that trust by using block-chain to track the food supply in China. If they can make the delivery of necessities in China safer, people will learn to trust the technology. In the United States, there is deep distrust of anything resembling this kind of data acquisition. Worldwide, trust is often the barrier to reaching out to better industry practices and economic models.

If Lenovo pulls it off in China, a billion people on the planet will be closer to trusting the decentralization of data, and data acquisition, via edge computing. The counter argument is that it all requires data centers, something on the other side of the edge computing bridge from the Internet of Things. Something to manage that data acquisition, that isn’t necessarily transparent to end users, outside of the institutional control of said data centers.

I know the above paragraphs looks like a lot of buzzwords and technobabble, but decentralizing data will lead to the democratization of technology, economies, and greater control of one’s personal data. The reason underlying this is that Lenovo is using open source type hardware (ARM) and software (Linux) in their edge computing solutions.

I would be the first to point out that this is likely by necessity as opposed to genuinely held benevolent intent if not for a conversation with Lenovo’s Chief Communications Officer, Torod Neptune. I was, perhaps, a little more vocal during the round table than I should have been, but I wanted to know where Lenovo really stood. If their push for the democratization of technology would be inclusive to all people. Mister Neptune assured me that it was, and that the notion was at the top of their ethics hierarchy.

I’m very skeptical when it comes to the good intentions of corporations. If you’ve read my speculative science fiction series, I do not cast corporations, or the government entities responsible for regulating them, in a very good light. I designed the series during the Occupy Wall Street movement. I spent some of the trip looking for where Lenovo had deviated from what Torod Neptune was pitching at the meeting with him. I see problems in the industry, but Lenovo isn’t at the root of them, and they may even swing things the other way at the commercial and institutional level.

That said, Lenovo has some challenges where inclusive access to technology is concerned.

TechWorld - Day 2: Consumer, Small Business, Consultancy

The second day was full of epic wins, and some missteps. Lenovo seemed conflicted, sending a mixed message on stage. I’ll break it down as best as I can.

The Good: There was talk of making technology more democratic, edge computing in the residential consumer market, bespoke cloud services, and access to technology, artificial intelligence, and data privacy for people with special needs. The decentralization of the Internet is the next step, the next big thing, and Lenovo is keenly aware of this. They understand that the market for such is emerging, regardless, and that there is an opportunity for every single person in that market.

The narrative from day one, about leveraging AI, smart data center management, and edge computing data acquisition would trickle down to the average user of tech in the home, and on the street. Lenovo’s message wasn’t that they were creating that market, but that they were ready to provide products thereof, almost like it was an evolutionary imperative that they were merely ready for.

I didn’t think much of the Thinkbook and Thinkplus line until I understood it a little better and who it is being marketed to. If you want to start your own global tech consultancy with automated customer care, and a small office staff, Lenovo is trying to provide hardware, and language translation support to that end. They are making big things for the little guy, and I approve.

The Bad: The second day was sprinkled with casual sexism, with a decidedly male-focused keynote, then capped off with Lenovo announcing a very respectful sponsorship of the Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team. I clapped, I cringed, I wanted to cry, and for various reasons. I feel like a few product managers and executives hadn’t gotten Torod Neptune’s memo about inclusivity.

Others, thankfully, were on point.

Lenovo is far from the only tech company grappling with these issues. Stating that there are many attractive females employed in a particular division of the company shouldn’t be an acceptable means to sell product. The message delivered for Thinkbook, and Thinkplus, were that they were “The Young Man” of the workplace, looking to start his consultancy, or small business venture. That he’d have hardware options for himself, and his female assistant.

The appeal of the Thinkbook / Plus product lines transcends gender, and the marketing should have reflected that. That women were excluded as customers during the keynote was a mistake. Hopefully, when those products start reaching the US, Lenovo doesn’t continue the tragic narrative put forward at TechWorld.

The two women they put on the stage as product managers were there, as directed by the man leading the keynote. One was the product manager for the Yoga Book 2, or Yoga Book C930 as it is also called. I’d have really liked to see her up there by herself, pitching the product, without a guy as the conversational prompt.

It’s important to note that what I saw is not the trend at Lenovo. They released their 2nd annual Diversity and Inclusion report a few days after Techworld. Lenovo’s workforce is 36.2 percent female, up 1.2 percent from 2018.

Traditionally under-represented racial and ethnic groups are on the rise in the executive ranks in the U.S. workforce, at 27.4 percent. Lenovo wants to make it 28 percent by 2020.

When I attended CES earlier this year, I was able to sit in at a conference, hosted by Lenovo, for women in the tech industry to meet and discuss the challenges they face in the workforce. It is these things that stand in contrast to what I saw on stage at TechWorld in China. Definitely, I’ll be paying close attention to whether Lenovo pushes the needle toward inclusion, and equity.

In that, I am hopeful.

Conclusion: TechWorld 2019 Overview

Getting to see the connected narrative of days one and two between artificial intelligence, data acquisition, and edge computing was something I needed. I don’t think people in the consumer market understand the influence of these things in their daily lives, and as a result, are afraid of those influences.

Sadly, companies like Google and Amazon do an excellent job of making it worse by lacking transparency in their data acquisition in a residential setting.

Lenovo talked about GPU virtualization in the cloud during the Day 1 Keynote. I’m giddy at all the possible applications thereof. I hope one day to have an extremely thin and light drawing tablet in hand, 5G connected, that can handle commercial applications, rendering done quickly in the cloud. The primary barrier to that being a reality, is trust.

Lenovo has a genuine opportunity to change the narrative at an industry level if they can make data collection via edge computing transparent, and democratic. Will Lenovo hold to that narrative? It starts with the people making decisions within, and there is every indication that Lenovo is struggling to move in that direction, in all markets.

That said, there is a genuine effort at high levels of the company to that end.

Thanks for reading.

For More TechWorld 2019 coverage, check out these other Lenovo Insiders, and the Hashtag #LenovoTechWorld #LenovoIN

Adam Fowler

https://twitter.com/AdamFowler_IT

https://www.adamfowlerit.com/

Onica Cupido

https://twitter.com/OnicaCupido

Vernon Chan

https://twitter.com/vernieman

https://vernonchan.com/

Lawrence Mann