SeT The COURSe
CIOs talk about priorities, change, evolving workforce
h e A LT h T e C h
SUMMeR 2018
Thinking about Amazon, looking at spending shifts
V I R T U A L LY TheRe
Creating innovative uses for VR
INTENTIONAL
INCLUSION
IT’S hIgh TIMe TO MOVe The needLe On dIVeRSITY In OUR TeCh SCene. MeeT SOMe Of The peOpLe LeAdIng The ChARge.
FILLING THE PIPELINE
Educators are responding to the tech job shortage. Now, to drum up the students.
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You need IT
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We have the IT factor. austin
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5/10/18 11:35 AM
GS - Techie Ad i.02.pdf
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4/26/18
1:46 PM
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OPEN
CONTENTS
12
THREE QUESTIONS
Pioplay’s Eric Pio discusses livestreaming production
26
MOVING THE NEEDLE
Meet some problemsolvers targeting tech sector diversity, inclusion
42
SETTING THE COURSE
CIOs share perspectives on managing expectations, changing workforces
daniel meigs
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OPEN
COnTenTs
DEPARTMENTS
08 YOU SHOULD KNOW
Vanderbilt student Tori Samples talks blockchain for refugees
10 HITCHING A RIDE
Hytch’s Mark Cleveland launches app with Nissan taking the wheel
50
11 COMMUNICATIONS COACHING
Crystal sees progress following $5M in funding
BEHAVIOR CHANGE
14 DATA BANK
Numbers from across the landscape
Virtual reality technology usage increases as improvements made
16 THE RULES
The European Union’s new data regulations are far-reaching
fEATURES
52
REACHING MAJOR MILESTONES
OnSomble’s platform could contain 500 million data points by year’s end
9
GETTING TO WORK
Nashville Technology Council heads to Capitol Hill
20 THE NEXT LEVEL
MTSU’s fledgling business intelligence and analytics master’s track emerges
22 PIPELINE fILLING
Educators address tech job shortage, but will the kids be interested?
32 NEW AVENUES
The built environment can create opportunities by supplementing tech’s labor pool
34 THE RECRUITERS’ VIEW Search pros share thoughts on supply, demand and from where talent is coming
38 BLOCKCHAIN BUILDING BLOCKS
Nashville company makes room for new ideas
39 TRANSIT TECHNOLOGY MTA unveils advancements, preps for more
40 TECH AND TOURISM TRACKING
Paramore oversees study involving changing nature of visitor centers
48 AI fOUNDATION LAID
Investor outlines machine learning’s promise, growing reach
54 A TAXING SITUATION
Technology companies should assess all implications of tax reform
55 CONNECT, CONVERT, COMBINE
Data management venture Trinisys adds to its core health care work
56 WATCH BOTTOM LEfT QUADRANT
One health IT CEO’s prescription for innovation
57 BETTER TOGETHER
Assessing the potential of an Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan foray into health care
58 MAKING AN IMPACT
Tech community rallies for hackathon benefiting 20 nonprofits
62 SPENDING PRIORITIES Jefferies report provides glimpse into hospital execs’ plans
63 READING CORNER
Nurturing a connected community goes beyond applied technology
37 PAIN POINTS
Hashed Health looks to ease health care payment woes via Bramble
4 leaders
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spring 2018 | NASHVILLEpOsT.COM
daniel meigs 5/10/18 11:01 AM
S PON S OR E D PROFIL E
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Vaco delivers top tech talent that’s ready to hit the ground running Vaco was founded with a few simple ideas in mind: to create a place where the talented malcontents of the world could be free to do work they love, where smart companies could connect with exceptional humans, and where people would work hard, have fun, and never want to leave. Just your typical every day, life-changing stuff. Whether you need additional IT experts for a new product launch or you’re searching for a talented software developer who’s ready to grow with your company longterm, vetting and hiring technology professionals can become an allconsuming task.
Hiring & consulting – the human way. vaco.com 615.324.8226
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Finding the right skill set takes time and energy; finding the right overall fit can feel like a gamble. Vaco is here to take the headache out of both. The recruiting teams continually build a strong pipeline of talented professionals and Vaco Nashville has successfully placed 400 technology candidates since last year.
Attracting hard-to-find technology talent and delivering it to your door is what Vaco does best. We’ll leverage our vast international network and deep local relationships to find the right skill set and the right culture fit for your business. Since its founding in 2002, Vaco has grown to more than 35 offices across the globe, 800+ employees, more than 4,200 consultants and $450M in revenue. Vaco has been named to Inc. magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies for the past 11 years and was recently ranked #4 on Forbes’ 2018 List of America’s Best Professional Recruiting Firms. From its founding up through today, Vaco remains dedicated to developing long-term relationships, life-long careers and creative client solutions.
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5/10/18 10:52 AM
EDITOR’S LETTER
oPEn
editorial
CHANNELING ENERGY
We are very thankful for our advisory board members, who contributed terrific insights and guidance to help us frame ideas and issues for this issue. Steve Anderson Technologent Dan Diniakos Technologent Brian Moyer Nashville Technology Council Dawn Patrick Cherry Bekaert Lorelei Samuelson CGI Peter Smith Golden Spiral Drew Stratton TierPoint
6 TEchIE
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The Nashville-area tech sector is still booming. There’s no debate to be had there. That growth, however, has laid bare more than ever before some of the factors that, if left unattended, will bite us soon enough. Middle Tennessee’s tech community isn’t alone in facing a shortage of skilled workers or being entirely too white and male or struggling to stimulate young brains into considering IT careers. But you could make the argument that it’s more important for this region to improve on those measures than it is for more established tech hotbeds with reputations that will carry them further on the talent front. That’s why we devoted a lot of energy and space in this issue to covering diversity, education and community development in technology. Getting this right — and doing so soon — has the potential to create a huge and sustainable competitive advantage for Nashville’s tech economy and give it a much better chance to build on the tremendous gains made so far. That said, I don’t think our tech community alone can or should come up with satisfactory answers to just how and where best to plug these gaps. But as with so many other things in Nashville, the will exists and the energy is being channeled to make things better. If you feel compelled to contribute, you have ways to do so. We are planning to stay on these community development and inclusion topics in Boom, the next installment in our magazine series and our annual in-depth look at growth, development and real estate. Look for that in your mailbox in September and please reach out with ideas, perspectives and pointers to smart people doing interesting things. We look forward to hearing from you. geert de lombaerde, Editor gdelombaerde@nashvillepost.com
Editor Geert De Lombaerde Managing Editor William Williams Contributing Editor Nancy Floyd Contributing WritErs Lena Anthony, Stephen Elliott, Ayumi Fukuda Bennett, Holly Fletcher
art art dirECtor Christie Passarello staFF PhotograPhErs Eric England, Daniel Meigs
production ProduCtion Coordinator Matt Bach graPhiC dEsignEr Abbie Leali, Mary Louise Meadors
publishing PublishEr Amy Mularski advErtising dirECtor Heather Cantrell Mullins businEss dEvEloPMEnt dirECtor Jennifer Trsinar aCCount EXECutivEs Maggie Bond, Rachel Dean, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Hilary Parsons, Mike Smith, Stevan Steinhart, Keith Wright salEs oPErations ManagEr Chelon Hill Hasty aCCount ManagErs Rachel Hellewell, Gary Minnis
marketing EvEnts dirECtor Lynsie Shackelford ProMotions ManagEr Olivia Moye
circulation subsCriPtion ManagEr Gary Minnis CirCulation ManagEr Casey Sanders
SouthComm Chief Executive Officer Blair Johnson Chief Financial Officer Bob Mahoney Vice President of Production Operations Curt Pordes Creative Director Heather Pierce 210 12TH AVE. S., SUITE 100 NASHVILLE, TN 37203 WWW.NASHVILLEPOST.COM Nashville Post is published quarterly by SouthComm. Advertising deadline for the next issue is Friday, Aug. 17, 2018. For advertising and subscription information, call 615-844-9307. Copyright © 2018 SouthComm, LLC.
SummER 2018 | nashvillEPOST.cOm
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PARTNER LETTER
NTC_LOGOTYPE_DARK_RGB
The momenTum of Middle Tennessee’s tech community is tremendous! In the past year, Money Magazine ranked Nashville as the 8th hottest city for tech jobs and Forbes ranked Nashville as 7th in the U.S. for growth of tech jobs. We have been ranked in the top ten in the U.S. for overall job growth five years in a row. All this adds up to more than 41,300 tech workers and a $6.1 billion economic impact in Middle Tennessee. In its third issue, this edition of Techie chronicals our community’s creative endeavors and profiles the innovators that execute on them. Even with all our progress, we’re not resting on our laurels — we’re coming together to solve problems. Tech volunteers and teachers team up to spark early interest and nurturing skills of students ages 8 - 18 with code camps and improved tech ed. Educators and tech employers ally to foster communication and build pipelines for job opportunities for the next programmers and future CTOs. Together the community partnered on Tech Hill Commons, a place and platform for continued professional development and tech community comradery. We’re uniting to advocate for the policies that empower innovation to thrive and attract strong talent. And we’re paving more paths into tech opportunities for all by launching Apprenti Tennessee, our technology-focused apprenticeship program that combines paid on-the-job training and education with placement in high paying, high-skill tech occupations. The pages of this issue celebrate the amazing effort and innovation of many to make Middle Tennessee the place we want to live, work and create. Working collaboratively, Middle Tennessee is truly on its way to becoming our nation’s Creative Tech Destination.
Brian Moyer
President & CEO Nashville Technology Council
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OPEN
YOu shOuLD KNOW
YOU SHOULD KNOW TORI SAMPLES
LEAf GLObAL fINtEcH
8 techie
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summer 2018 | NASHVILLEPOst.cOm
You Should Know.indd 8
Yes, it employs the blockchain. And yes, it involves financial services. But, despite some confusion, Leaf Global Fintech is not one of the cars on the rollercoaster ride of cryptocurrency speculation. The pre-revenue startup, launched by several Vanderbilt University graduate students, gives fleeing refugees a way to securely store and transfer their financial assets as they cross borders with indeterminate destinations and schedules. “A lot of banks won’t serve refugees, and when they’re forced to flee, their option is just to grab whatever cash they have on hand,” says Tori Samples, Leaf Global Fintech’s CTO and an MBA student at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management. The company completed market validation work in six countries last summer and finished its first pilot project earlier this year in Rwanda. In the past year, Samples and her colleagues have won the SXSW Accelerator Pitch event’s Best Bootstrap Award and the pitch competition at Nashville conference 36|86. And they’re starting to look for substantial investment, either from venture capital or impact investors. Leaf’s for-profit business model lets refugees transfer mobile money — technology common in East Africa and elsewhere by which people can exchange cash for e-currency on their phone that can be moved around by text message — to the company’s distributed ledger for safekeeping. (Mobile money can’t cross borders.) Acting like a traditional bank, Leaf invests the refugees’ savings float and takes a small cut when friends and family put money into a refugee’s account. Leaf estimates there’s about $1.9 billion in market opportunity for the service. “We think setting up as a for-profit business, working with investors, ultimately that’s going to help meet the needs of these refugees a lot faster than if you asked people for donations to help them,” Samples says. The group plans a full-scale pilot this summer in partnership with a regional bank in Rwanda, which Samples describes as a “regulatory sandbox” that offers new companies initial flexibility before subjecting them to standard regulations. “At the end of the day, we want to use [the blockchain] for what it does well,” Samples says. “I don’t think blockchain is going to save the world. I think people use it for way too many things. … But you need a good mix of transparency and security when dealing with refugees. You need it to be transparent so that the refugees can go check their account on the public ledger at any time. But it also has to be anonymized because you’re dealing with a vulnerable population.”
ERIC ENGLAND
5/10/18 9:31 AM
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OPEN
Nearly 7,500 tech jobs have been created in the last five years, earning Nashville #7 on Time magazine’s list of the 20
TOUCHING BASE
HITCHING A RIDE
Hytch founder Mark Cleveland launches app with Nissan taking the wheel by William Williams
hottest cities for tech jobs. With an economic tech impact of $5B, we are thriving as an international tech leader. At the center of this growth and prosperity is the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. Learn more at nashvillechamber.com.
Source: Chmura Economics and CompTIA 2017
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Much has happened since local entrepreneur Mark Cleveland unveiled his idea for Hytch in late 2016. And it’s all been positive, particularly since the venture’s formal launch in February. First, but not unimportantly, Hytch is now known as Hytch Rewards, an app for iOS and Android devices that uses synchronized GPS technology to validate and reward ridesharing behavior. Second, the app’s impact as measured by “vehicles miles not driven” (VMND) — defined as the collective miles that were traveled in a shared vehicle — is eye-catching. For example, the VMND figure as of March 9 was about 257,600; as of May 30, and based on April growth and various projections, that figure is expected to be about 5.3 million. Lastly, the Hytch Rewards launch was done in conjunction with Nissan North America, the first community partner to sponsor cash incentives earned by people who share rides in Tennessee. Through the Nissan partnership, individuals earn 1 cent per shared mile ending in the state any day of the week or 5 cents per shared mile ending in the 10-county area surrounding Nashville during peak commuter days, Monday through Friday. “The topic of ‘mobility’ is changing ... how the public interacts with vehicles,”
Mark Cleveland
says Dan Teeter, Nissan’s director of vehicle connected services. “We want to incentivize a change in behavior where we get more drivers and riders coming together to share experiences, share one vehicle, reduce congestion on our highways and improve quality of life for everyone who uses public and private transportation on the roads. “Nissan Intelligent Mobility is all about making transportation safer, smarter and more enjoyable to everyone,” he adds. “Hytch Rewards provides us with a local opportunity to do something really tangible in this space.” Cleveland says he envisions Hytch Rewards filling vacant seats in solodriver cars much like AirBnB fills vacant rooms and homes. Cleveland’s expectation is bold. In the first full year of adoption, he wants about 10 percent of Nashville daily commuters to start using the app. He notes that it takes removing only 5 percent of vehicles to clear two lanes of traffic during peak commuter times. “Partners set their own rules for rewards and can establish precise coordinates for reward zones down to a single building,” he says. “They even set parameters for how much can be earned per mile, what time of day rewards can be earned and who is rewarded as employees, drivers and passengers.” During a September 2016 interview with the Post, Cleveland said people fight traffic by quitting their jobs or moving to avoid time-consuming and stressful commutes. “Happier commuters make for a happier workplace.”
ERIC ENGLAND
5/10/18 5/10/18 11:38 9:33 AM
TOUCHING BASE
COMMUNICATIONS COACHING Crystal progresses following $5M in funding By William Williams
Nashville-based communications coaching platform Crystal Project Inc. is off to a strong 2018. Landing robust funding — particularly for a young company — can provide such momentum. Founded in 2014 and with an office in Boston, the software company in January saw the completion of a $5 million Series B funding round. Investors in the company, which undertakes personality analysis using artificial intelligence, include Birchmere Venture, Falmouth Ventures, HubSpot and Salesforce Ventures. Though CEO and Founder Drew D’Agostino says no other round of funding will be forthcoming “in the foresee-
able future,” Crystal has parlayed some positives from the $5 million. Specifically, the investment has helped the company expand its engineering team, grow its assessment and outreach products and pursue new integrations. “We have added a few software engineers and product specialists, a chief revenue officer and a director of growth,” D’Agostino says of the past few months. Crystal started as a Google Chrome extension designed to help users improve their email message writing. At the time, the team began developing applications in the Harvard Innovation Lab. Using proprietary personality detection technology, Crystal analyzes public data to explain how you can expect any
Drew D’Agostino
given person to behave, how he or she wants to be spoken to and, perhaps more importantly, what you can expect your relationship to be like. However, Crystal now also offers insights about personality, behavioral style and communication preferences. The company’s mission is “to help all professionals communicate more effectively, build stronger relationships and understand their coworkers and customers on a much deeper level,” D’Agostino says. Crystal bills itself as being able to assist salespeople and recruiters in analyzing a target’s personality based on her or his online presence. Its purpose, in
OPEN
simple terms, is to help users maximize their interactions with one another. “Personality assessments have become just as important as resumes to both professionals and companies, but nobody has a resume for their personality,” D’Agostino says. The company’s work is gaining traction, with Crystal having garnered media attention from Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Fortune.com and CNN. As to the general changes thus far this calendar year, D’Agostino says Crystal most notably has “entered into the talent space” after spending its first three years focusing on selling to sales and marketing organizations. That makes sense for — as the company’s website notes — “a small team working at the intersection of social science, technology, and communication.” “We’ve learned,” D’Agostino says, “that there are lots of applications for our technology for building and managing teams that have greater value across a whole company.”
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5/10/18 5/10/18 11:39 9:34 AM
OPEN
THree QUesTiOns
THREE QUESTIONS ERIC PIO
PIOPLAY LIVESTREAM
Eric Pio and Marissa Foshee Pio founded Nashvillebased Pioplay Livestream in 2017, billing it as the first Tennessee company to specialize in livestreaming production and strategy. Pioplay focuses on HD multi-camera livestream productions. Using merely a two-person crew, it can stream or simulcast to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Periscope, embeddable HD players, password-protected sites or ticketed pay-per-view links. Pioplay Livestream offers traditional TV broadcasting elements, remote live interviews, chat board, a live feed for projectors and an automated Twitter feed. Eric Pio chatted recently with Post Managing Editor William Williams about the company’s quick rise.
12 leaders
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spring 2018 | NASHVILLEpOsT.COM
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THREE QUESTIONS
What has changed in the market to allow Pioplay to grow as it has? When Facebook Live launched in 2016, live streaming went mainstream overnight. In July 2017, Netflix subscriptions surpassed cable as cord cutters began to find all of their entertainment online, and social media platforms began to land major live streaming contracts with sports leagues and entertainment brands. Now in 2018, the new Facebook algorithm is in our favor and live streaming has a wider organic reach and six times more engagement than any other media format on Facebook for brands. The cord cutters are engaging more with live “in the moment” experiences. As more brands become aware of the potential, adoption is growing rapidly. And our clients realize that we average far better than the national averages reported by Facebook. Not only are we the first in Tennessee to focus our production company entirely on live streaming, but we are the only company in the nation specializing in live streaming strategy based off our own data analysis of both our streams and thousands of others. Going live is not enough. There has to be a strategy in retaining the most viewers. The data proves it’s the difference between an artist with millions of followers getting 100,000 or 1 million views. It’s just the two of you. How do you envision that changing as demand grows? And how does a business like this truly scale? We spent our first year testing a variety of equipment and fine-tuned the production process down to a two-person team. Now in our second year, we are focused on social media strategy and fine-tuning our best practices and recommendations for our clients. In our third year, we expect to be such a well-oiled machine that we can write a playbook for the right talent to follow.
OPEN
Once the demand is high enough, we can launch two-person teams to fit the need in different cities and in different niche industries. But make no mistake, it will take the right talent to fit the bill. I literally have four different controls for each camera I control, so I’m a bit like a one-man band doing the same work as a large camera crew. On top of that, Marissa focuses on analytics and marketing, and she follows so much streaming data from thousands of profiles and pages that she’s literally been mistaken as an AI. Comprised, we are doing the work of probably 15 to 20 workers. So when the time is right, the talent will have to be right as well for our teams. Technology regularly needs updating, refreshing or replacing. How will the technical aspect of what you do have evolved and expanded in five years? In five years, you will see faster upload speeds, lower latency, higher-quality wireless capabilities in the equipment, higher resolution and more interactive options available on platforms and overall lower costs on equipment. I think VR/AR/360 will either have a big breakthrough or will fizzle out like 3D televisions. Subscription-based platforms will oversaturate and everything will move to ad-based free platforms (Facebook/Twitter/YouTube). But in the end, most importantly, streaming tech will be more adoptable at the consumer level in five years, and those who have already paid the higher cost of entry now will have the advantage of confidence and brand recognition in their programming to outweigh the newcomers. To be honest, I don’t have as much interest in the tech aspect as you would think. I’m a firm believer that in five years, it will be data-based strategy that will be absolutely necessary to even compete in livestream programming, hence why we’ve made data analysis a huge part of our business. I’m more interested in what will retain viewers for the long haul, and our strategy can go toe to toe with a large crew and higher-priced equipment any day.
TOGETHER WE’RE MAKING A DIFFERENCE Together We Create Opportunities for Nashville’s Tech Talent
200+
500+
Local Companies Have Hired Our Grads
Graduates with New Careers in Tech
2
New Programs Launched This Year
• Data Science + Front-end Web Designer/Developer • More coming in partnership with Apprenti Tennessee • More coming in partnership with you
Nashville Software School is your partner for high potential tech talent and for strengthening the Nashville tech community. We need your engagement with our mentorship programs, apprenticeships and internships, continuing education programs, and curriculum advisory boards.
Learn how we can do more to
Create Opportunities Together. nashss.com/techie
ERIC ENGLAND
Three Questions.indd NP_6-18_68.indd 13 13
5/10/18 5/10/18 11:39 9:36 AM
OPEN
DAtA BANK
DATA BANK
UNDER ATTACK
tech jobs are in strong demand and will continue to be. And in a world of hacks and breaches and phishing, so are cybersecurity services. On the supply side, funding is plentiful for health tech companies and, by next year, the use of robots will have nearly doubled from the 2014 mark.
Tech jobs are among those projected to grow most quickly across Tennessee by 2024. Here are projections (with 2014 as the starting year) for some specific positions.
TOTAL jOB GROwTH
ANNUAL CHANGE
2,930
2.7%
720
2.5%
Application software developers
1,310
2.4%
support specialists
1,930
2.3%
computer network architects
380
2.2%
Database administrators
380
2.0%
1,150
1.7%
Web developers
320
1.7%
Network support specialists
430
1.5%
computer programmers
800
1.4%
computer systems analysts systems software developers
Network/systems administrators
86%
of companies surveyed reported at least one cyber information theft, loss or attack in 2017
IN DEMAND
OCCUPATION
There’s no hiding from cybersecurity issues anymore. The vast majority of companies have had to respond to an attack recently…
36% – virus or worm attack 33% – email phishing 27% – data breach 25% – data deletion …and the cost of both the attacks and businesses’ response is growing quickly. 23% of 2017 respondents said fraud damage was at least 7% of revenues, 3% of 2016 respondents said the damage cost that much Source: Kroll
Not surprisingly, the world’s largest companies expect to lose most to cyber incidents.
Source: Tennessee Department of Labor & Workforce Development
executives, sorted by company size, expecting losses of at least $50m
INVESTING IN HEALTH IT
RISE OF THE ROBOTS
VC funding for digital health companies around the world is still on a big upswing. In the first three months of this year, firms invested nearly $2.5 billion in digital health businesses, a year-over-year increase of 52 percent. Here’s a breakdown of the Q1 money flows.
The adoption of automation equipment is set to accelerate in the coming years, although North America will still lag.
400K
North America Asia/Australia
Digital health benefits Other Source: Mercom Capital Group
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12%
more than $1B
42%
22%
100K
mobile health
$500m-$1B
of respondents plan to invest more in cyber risk management in the coming year
200K
clinical decision support
11%
64%
300K
telemedicine
$50m-$500m
And that is spurring investment growth.
europe
Data analytics
2%
Less than $50m
2014
2016
2019* Source: IFR World Robotics
of respondents plan to buy cyber insurance for the first time, adding to the 34% who already have it Source: Marsh-Microsoft Cyber Perception Survey
summer 2018 | NASHVILLEPOst.cOm
5/10/18 9:37 AM
iNDeX
A-B Aaron Gani 50 Alex Curtis 19 Alex Naddell 34 Amazon 57 Antoine Agassi 55 ApprenTech Tennessee 29 Asurion 27, 58 athenahealth 56 Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz 17 Baylor Bone Swindell 19 BehaVR 50 Ben Kerry 17 Berkshire Hathaway 57 Bharat Sutariy 57 Bill McCleskey 28 Bill Wright 58 BlackBox Realities 50 Black in Tech Nashville 27 Black Tech Mecca 27 Bramble 37
Jarrod Dicker 38
Conexión Américas 24
Jeff Haithcoat 19
Corey Todaro 37
Jennifer Abernathy 60
Crystal Project Inc. 11
Jennings A. Jones College of Business 20
OnRole 52
Jonathan Bush 56
Paramore Digital 40
JourneyPure 23, 50
Pioplay Livestream 12
JPMorgan Chase 57
Po.et 38
Jurnell Cockhren 27
Reynolds Porter Chamberlain 17
Kapor Center for Social Impact 29
Robert Grajewski 23
Karen Thompson 58
Rudina Seseri 48
Kerry Schrader 28
Ruth Smith 34
DATalent 34 David Briley 30, 63 Deanna Steele 42 Dearl Lampley 23 DevDigital 52 Diversified Trust 48 Donna Gilley 22 Doug Renfro 22 Drew D’Agostino 11 Dwayne Towell 23 Elevation Search Partners 34, 36 Enderson Miranda 52 Eric Pio 12 Fallon Wilson 27
BTC Inc. 38 BTC Labs 38 BTC Media 38
C-F Catalyst HTI 57 Cerner 57 CGI 20 Change Catalyst 27 Charlie Apigian 20 Chris Gonzalez 51 Christopher Rehm 57 Columbia State Community College 23
HackerRank 36
Shawn Mathis 52 Steve Bland 39 Susie Long 28
Lee Kebler 50
Synchronous Health 57
LifePoint Health 57
Tech Hill Commons 58
Lipscomb University 23, 51
Logan Hartline 60
Glasswing Ventures 48
Sasan Zamani 54
Leaf Global Fintech 8, 23
Frazier & Deeter 54
General Data Protection Regulation 16
Sandi Hoff 24, 29
Leadership Tennessee 24
Lisa Henderson 57
G-K
OnSomble 52
L-N
Fisk University 29
Brian Hoppes 34, 36 Bridgestone Americas 28
O-Z
Community Health Systems 42, 44
Dan Teeter 10
TennCare 42 Tennessee Respite Coalition 60 Tennessee State University 20, 29
Lorelei Samuelson 20
The Nurse Company 52
Majora Carter 32
The Wond’ry 23
Manish Shah 42, 47
Thomas Ross 53
Marissa Foshee Pio 12
Tori Samples 8
Mark Cleveland 10
Tracy Weir 17
Hack for the Community 58
Metro Nashville Public Schools 22, 30, 63
Hannah Paramore 40
Metro Transit Authority 39
Tyler Evans 38
Hashed Health 23, 37
Middle Tennessee State University 20
Vaco 19, 34
HCA Healthcare 20, 58
Mike Biselli 57
Vanderbilt University 50
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 56
MiTech 28
Vic Gatto 57
Mixtroz 28
Yanika Smith-Bartley 28
HealthStream 58
Nashville Civic Design Center 32
Hugh Hale 42
Nashville IT Symposium 42
Hunter Groves 60
Nashville Software School 44, 58
Hytch Rewards 10
Nashville Technology Council 19, 23, 27, 44, 58, 64
Ingram Content Group 42 Jarrett Strickland 27
Trinisys 55
Nissan North America 10 Noah Robinson 23, 50
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THE RULES: A CHANGING ERA OF PRIVACY
The European Union’s new data regulations reach far and wide
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On May 25, the European Union will usher in a new era of data privacy, not just on the continent but around the world. Companies and other entities that process personal data that somehow passes through Europe or is related to its residents will be subject to the new rules, dubbed the General Data Protection Regulation. Nashville-based technology and health care companies, even those without a physical presence in Europe, are among those that have been preparing for the new requirements.
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During a series of webinars and continuing legal education offerings earlier this year, attorneys with Memphis-based regional law firm Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz offered a game plan for those facing the impending regulatory framework. “This is really going to be a function of policies and procedures and having a program in place within an organization to respond to data subject requests,” Washington-based Baker Donelson attorney Tracy Weir said during the most recent webinar, held in March. An overwhelming majority of the European Parliament members adopted GDPR in April 2016, leaving two years before its provisions would be enforced. The first GDPR proposal was released in 2012, and the regulation will supersede a directive originally adopted in 1995. According to Weir, GDPR will serve to give people more individual rights over the processing of their personal data. The definitions of both processing and data are broad. “Any handling of data would likely qualify as processing,” she said, noting the qualifying data pertains not just to “an identified individual, but information that could potentially be used to identify an individual.” And the fines are steep, unlike in some earlier regulatory frameworks. Companies could face sanctions of up to €20 million or 4 percent of annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is greater, for breaking the rules. Ben Kerry, an attorney with London-based law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain who joined Weir during the webinar, enumerated the new and expanded rights (the violation of which could incur serious penalties for those responsible) for individuals covered under the law. The right to erasure, or so-called right to be forgotten, is one of the most talked-about new rights under GDPR. “A data subject has the right to have his personal data erased where there’s no compelling reason for continued processing,” he said. That would apply to American companies with data related to EU residents.
Most of the GDPR regulations include exceptions of some kind. For example, a right to avoid automated decision making and profiling, such as that used to determine if someone qualifies for a loan, could be pre-empted by obtaining consent or where authorized by separate EU or member-state law. Another right under GDPR: the right to withdraw consent. “It has to be as easy to withdraw consent as it is to give it in the first place,” Kerry said. And the consent consumers give for use of their data will also change. Under GDPR, it must be freely given, specific, informed and an unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes, the lawyers said. Also, consent has to be clearly distinguishable from other matters, so the sort of bundling now common is “unlikely to work,” Weir said. Because the consent must be “freely given,” Weir suggested it would be unlikely that employees could consent to their employers collecting personal data
Under GDPR, responses to data requests must be fulfilled within 30 days (with a couple of exceptions). For companies to comply with, for example, the data portability requirement, Kerry suggested it might be simpler to set up a system in which that portability could be achieved from the outset rather than scrambling, resource-intensively, to meet data demands after the fact. Weir suggested a number of practical considerations for data processors and controllers to consider. What personal data are collected (from employees, business contacts, customers)? What notifications are provided and consents collected? Where are personal data stored and where are they transmitted? For some companies, she said, it will require a data protection officer, a privacy officer or someone else in the organization to take charge of the process, which should be incorporated into the organization’s normal workflow. One change under GDPR that may become obvious to consumers will be the simplification of privacy notices. Language qualifiers like “may,” “might” and, “potentially,” ironically may not meet the clear and concise language requirement of the legislation, Weir noted. Privacy notices will have to avoid legalistic language, provide concrete and definitive information — and eliminate ambiguity.
‘TImE wILL TELL HOw THE ENfOrcEmENT O P E r AT E S , I T ’ S O N E O f T H E b I g wA I T- A N d -S E E A r E A S .’
ben kerry, reynolds porter chamberlain
because of the “imbalance of power between those parties.” Instead, human resources departments will have to look to other avenues enumerated under GDPR for collection of employee data. Data subjects also have the new right to data portability, or the ability to receive personal data in a structured, commonly used format that can be transmitted to another controller without hindrance. For example, Kerry said, an online grocery shopper, whose credit card information and preferred food brands are stored by his preferred grocer, should be able to easily send that information to a new grocery store, if he or she so chooses.
“This is a very big difference from how we construct privacy notices in the United States,” she said. “[GDPR] is likely to require revisiting privacy notices.” Though GDPR will go into force May 25, several questions about how it will be enforced remain unanswered. Weir and Kerry noted that European authorities have offered guidance on several questions of law related to the expansive legislation, and yet real-world application of the rules could raise even further questions. One major outstanding question is how GDPR will be enforced as it relates to American companies with no physical presence in the EU. Weir called it “a big question mark,” though noted that American and EU authorities have collaborated on privacy enforcement in the past. “Time will tell how the enforcement operates,” Kerry added. “It’s one of the big wait-and-see areas.”
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COMPA N Y PROFIL E
We are a community committed to promoting women in technology through scholarships, education, community outreach, and networking.
Join Us In Shaping The Future of Tech
Women in Technology of Tennessee (WITT) Website www.wittn.org
All across Middle Tennessee, women in technology are dealing with the same challenges, craving the same opportunities, seeking new ways to grow, and looking for like-minded women to share it with. At WiTT, we connect women with a community that believes in and advocate for them.
Our History Women in Technology of Tennessee began in 1999 as a small group of female leaders in technology in the Nashville area. Since then, WiTT has expanded to include hundreds of members. It grew by word-of-mouth: women telling other women about a community where they can share their experiences, discover development opportunities, and help young women establish their own careers.
Our Mission Through education, networking, scholarships and community outreach, WiTT promotes women in technology and helps carve a path for the next generation. WiTT members contribute to the success of the amazing women in our community. We are committed to honoring those who have come before us and empowering the ones who will come after. Together, we’ll equip women throughout Middle Tennessee to shape the future of technology.
Our Pillars Education
We believe in learning from one another, sharing our knowledge and experiences, and equipping members to succeed in technology-related roles. Our educationfocused events allow members to expand their expertise and grow in their careers. Our WiTT educational events focus on an area of technology and feature a subject matter expert, technology executive from a local company, or a panel of female
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We are a community committed to promoting women in technology through scholarships, education, community outreach, and networking. Whether you want to expand your expertise, connect with other women in tech or donate your time and resources, we invite you to join us in shaping the future of tech.
technology leaders. These meetings are great forums for women to educate themselves and learn more about the subject, while connecting with other successful women in IT.
Connection Monthly events and regular happy hours give you the chance to meet other women in technology and discover new opportunities. Learn from the experience of women ahead of you in their careers and lend your wisdom to those just starting out.
Outreach Through community outreach initiatives, we work to get more girls interested in technology —whether that’s introducing them to it for the first time or igniting their existing passion — through coding camps, workshops, internship opportunities, scholarships and more. WiTT gives back to our local community through outreach projects and provides volunteer opportunities for members. We support outreach initiatives such as coding camps, Art2Stem, community involvement, and more through both financial and volunteering commitments.
Scholarships We provide scholarships to help high school and college girls, as well as women returning to school, succeed in technologyrelated fields. By serving students in Middle Tennessee, we foster the growth of female tech talent and positively influence our local workforce. WiTT partners with area businesses and educational institutions to offer a wide variety of scholarships. Our scholarships encourage and enable recipients to pursue technology-related careers and contribute to our local community of women in tech. To foster that community, we provide local scholarship recipients with the opportunity to join WiTT at no additional cost.
Twitter twitter.com/WiTTNashville Facebook facebook.com/ WomeninTechnologyofTennessee Learn More membership@wittn.org
S PE C I A LT IE S Education: Our education-focused events allow members to expand their expertise, grow in their careers, and succeed in technology-related roles. Connection: Monthly events and regular happy hours give you the chance to meet other women in technology and discover new opportunities. Outreach: Through community outreach initiatives, we work to get more girls interested in technology through coding camps, workshops, internship opportunities, scholarships and more Scholarships: We provide scholarships to help high school and college girls, as well as women returning to school, succeed in technology-related fields.
CON TAC T Email: membership@wittn.org
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FEATURES
GETTING THEIR HANDS DIRTY The Nashville Technology Council team finds its feet on Capitol Hill By STEpHEN ELLIoTT
n 2015, Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law an update to the state’s tax code that, among other changes, instituted a sales tax on software as a service. Perhaps not so coincidentally, that was around the time that the Nashville Technology Council, an association of about 400 local tech and related companies, began monitoring legislation at the state legislature. In the 2018 legislative session, the NTC’s brand-new advocacy arm employed registered lobbyists for the first time. And next year, they expect to push legislation of their own. “Any association, once they get organized and start adding value for their members, advocacy is a natural transition to continue to be relevant and impact issues that affect their members,” says Jeff Haithcoat, director of acquisitions and expansion at search and staffing firm Vaco and the chair of the NTC’s advocacy committee. Both Baylor Bone Swindell, a veteran Tennessee lobbyist, and Alex Curtis, the NTC’s director of communications and public affairs, registered on behalf of the organization during the 2018 session. Curtis points to two wins during the group’s first year on Capitol Hill. One successful bill, sponsored by two Nashville legislators, codified blockchain in the state and permitted the use of smart contracts. Before the NTC got involved, Curtis says, the bill
I
was focused on the use of blockchain for cryptocurrency, while many Nashville tech companies use the technology for other purposes, specifically health care. Input from member company representatives and others led to a broadening of scope for the legislation. Another bill would have added new sanctions for businesses that commit data privacy violations, the third such bill in as many years. “It’s an important issue,” Curtis says. “Consumers have their data breached, it seems like, on an almost daily basis, and it’s something our industry is very concerned about. While at the same time, when you’re changing the law year after year after year, it can be difficult for businesses and anybody dealing with the law to adjust to those changes.” That bill eventually died in the House. “Up until now, we’ve been reactionary,” Curtis says. “This is the first year we actually spoke up and addressed those issues on a legislative level. Next year, you may see us come with things that the industry could need policy-wise.” The NTC’s advocacy committee met shortly after the 2018 legislative session concluded — both to review what they considered two victo-
ries and to plan for next year’s session. Curtis suggests the NTC could propose a dedicated revenue stream for technology-related workforce development. Specifically, he says, that revenue could come from the software as a service sales tax, turning a burden on local tech companies into a source for future talent. “Our state is one of the only in the Southeast that levies a tax like that, and it’s specific to the tech industry,” Curtis says. “I do think there’s an appetite among legislators, and it’s kind of a non-controversial issue when you’re talking about putting more people to work in each of these legislative districts.” Workforce development is, as both Curtis and Haithcoat say, the NTC’s first, second and third priority. If at least some tax revenues from the SaaS sales tax could be diverted to training programs for technology careers, the NTC’s leadership would tally another win. “We want to put the word out to policymakers that we are a voice for the tech community,” Haithcoat says. “We are not a new association, but we’re an association that’s newly engaging in advocacy. For us, it’s just education.”
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Charlie Apigian
THE NEXT LEVEL
MTSU’s young business intelligence and analytics master’s track has grown quickly By GEERT DE LomBAERDE
on’t just stand there. Do something! As a member of HCA Healthcare’s business intelligence team earlier this decade, Lorelei Samuelson was helping bridge the gap between the massive amounts of data the company generates and the actionable insights that can be created from sorting and categorizing that information in new ways. In doing so, she realized the master’s program in computer information systems she took at Middle Tennessee State University didn’t have in its curriculum the BI components — the problem-solving and extrapolating of information you can’t look up in a search engine — that she could see were rapidly emerging in the corporate world. So Samuelson, who also earned her bachelor’s degree at MTSU and is now an architect and senior consultant at CGI, circled back with some former professors in the department of computer information systems at the Jennings A. Jones College of Business. That led to broader conversations and to Samuelson eventually coordinating the donation to the university of almost $1.5 million worth of MicroStrategy software licenses and other materials.
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In the fall of 2015, CIS Department Chair Charlie Apigian and his team launched a concentration in business intelligence and analytics for the Master of Science in Information Systems program. The track groups classes in project management, analytics, data mining and BI — melding the highly technical to the corporate practical. “There’s a difference between skills and an education,” Samuelson says. “This program is looking to create broader skill sets.” Students are taught and shown that the tech itself isn’t the key — Apigian says he is no longer using the MicroStrategy platform on which he launched the track. Instead, the value they will take back to their current and future employers is in already having drilled down into real data from real companies to solve real problems. “The tools available to us all these days are so powerful but we don’t necessarily know if they’re using the right information,” Apigian says. “We’re producing students with more breadth and knowledge about how to use data.” The BIA track has quickly found fertile ground: Of the 104 MTSU students now working toward information systems master’s degrees — that number is up from just 16 a decade ago — 50 are in the BIA concentration. That number could double with the infrastructure Apigian and his team have assembled.
86%
A big-picture selling point for Apigian and MTSU to area employers: A whopping 86 percent of the school’s grads stay in the region for work. The brain drain so many area tech stakeholders lament doesn’t appear to be happening in Murfreesboro.
“Would we be stressed if we doubled? Yes, but I think we’d be OK,” he says. Help is on the way. Apigian will this fall add two faculty members — moving from Florida State University and Mississippi State University — to his CIS team and is in line for another position next year. “The problem isn’t us,” he says. “We can produce more good people. But we need more people coming to us.” The TNPromise program channeling students from two-year schools around the state is helping grow MTSU’s pipeline, Apigian says. But the problem is bigger and far more deep-seated: Not enough students are being sparked into aiming for tech strategy and management careers. Samuelson says a factor in that shortfall is in the way younger children are being exposed to potential tech careers, which is often via coding days or camps. Kids, she says, don’t want to become coders or programmers because many of them view that as rote work. “It’s not so much about what they do. Kids know the jobs will change,” she says. “The education we give them should be an opportunity to love technology. Think about the energy at robotics shows; you can’t create that with more programming classes in high school. Look at how DECA creates a pipeline for those with interest in marketing.”
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Transforming Your
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Implementations
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“Virsys12 and their talented staff immediately understood the challenge and need, and they have been a true partner in making our vision a reality.”
- Rob Watkins
Tennessee Justice Center
2018 Nashville Technology Council Team of the Year Award
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5.1 REASONS CLOUD TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS SUCCEED Why do technical project implementations fail? We believe it is more helpful to know what makes a technical project succeed. Our top five ‘must have’ elements: 1. A clear definition of project success. How will you know you’ve achieved your goal if you don’t know where you’re going? All project stakeholders must know what success for the project will look like. Each member of the team must be aligned with the vision. 2. A well-defined project scope – understood and managed well. The entire team must understand project scope (essentially the written agreement of what is going to be accomplished), how it will be measured, and the budget parameters. Consistent, ongoing guidance by the project manager, with constant visibility to the client on budget, benchmarks, and potential obstacles to be overcome, paves the way for success. 3. Skills of the project team aligned with the specific needs of the project. The beauty of using a highly certified consulting partner for your implementation is the deep bench of potential talent throughout the project lifecycle. 4. Frequent and clear communication: The most effective client
teams we’ve worked with communicate with us, and we communicate with them regularly, about project milestone status, budget variances, as well as project issues and risks. 5. A successful implementation methodology. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. You can be more effective and successful by using a methodology that has been tested and consistently proven to deliver in the real world and clearly understood by all members of the team.
5.1 Executive Sponsorship
Even with the points above taken into consideration, the right leadership from the organization must be on-board and in-sync throughout the entire process. Getting to the end of a project just to realize you’ve built the wrong person’s vision is about as bad as it gets. High-profile “failures” and pitfalls catch our attention, however, if you want your cloud technology project to soar, spend real time focusing on the positive steps you can take for project success. Virsys12 received a Partner Innovation Award for 2017 from Salesforce. We would love to have a conversation about your next project at solutions@virsys12.com
Virsys12 is an award-winning, Salesforce Consulting Partner focused on business technology innovation nationwide. With success providing transformative solutions, our team maintains top customer satisfaction and user adoption ratings. A recipient of a 2017 Salesforce Partner Innovation Award, we guarantee our services for implementations, integrations, applications, and technology strategy. More at Virsys12.com. Virsys12 278 Franklin Road, Suite 350 Four CityPark Brentwood, TN 37027 Website Virsys12.com Twitter @virsys12 Linkedin linkedin.com/company/virsys12 Founded 2011
S PE C I A LT IE S Implementations: Customized, on-budget, and with measurable ROI. Our work is guaranteed with expert training and support. Integrations: Eliminate data silos and integrate Salesforce with your website, other AppExchange applications and legacy systems for a robust 360 degree view of your business. Applications: Make processes easier, faster, and more efficient. Deploying our proprietary V12 apps, or 3rd party apps from the AppExchange® Strategy: Collaborative high-level, longrange planning for tomorrow’s technology
CON TAC T Email: solutions@virsys12.com Phone: 615.800.6768
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FILLING THE PIPELINE
Local educators are responding to the tech job shortage. The next big hurdle: Getting more kids interested. By LENA ANTHoNy
ationwide, 58 percent of new STEM jobs are in computing, yet only 8 percent of STEM graduates are in computer science, says Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science. Like every other state, Tennessee is experiencing a tech job shortage. Currently there are more than 6,000 open computing jobs but not nearly enough qualified workers to fill them — in 2015, Tennessee had only 625 college graduates with computer science majors. These are the types of numbers that keep Donna Gilley up at night. As the director of career and technical education for Metro Nashville Public Schools, it’s her job to ensure that Nashville’s 88,000 public school students have the opportunity to learn computer science. One way has been through the district’s Academies of Nashville program, which is recognized nationally for its career-based, experiential learning model. At the city’s 12 comprehensive high schools, students select a program of study in one of 39 career-based academies. General education courses are taught through the lens of that career, while students gain exposure and experience through college visits, career fairs, industry-related field trips, job shadowing, internships and senior capstone projects. “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” Gilley says. Of the 39 academies, only two are concentrated in tech — the Academy of Information Technology at John Overton High School and the Academy of National Safety and Security Tech-
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nologies at Stratford High School in East Nashville. At Hunters Lane High School in North Nashville, students can study cybersecurity or coding, but it’s not a full Academy program. For the first time in the program’s history, the IT academy at Overton was at capacity this year. “We know based on the needs in the community we could have eight or nine tech academies, but the reality is we haven’t had the student interest,” Gilley says. “We must get better at students choosing IT, and to do that we need to close the exposure gap.” MNPS has already begun offering coding in middle school. For the current school year, schools were allowed to opt into the coding coursework. For the 2018-19 school year, 18 middle schools will be required to provide the curriculum in the eighth grade. Doug Renfro, executive director of learning technology and library services for the district, says schools are strongly encouraged to implement the curriculum at all grade levels and as early as fifth grade, but due to personnel costs it is not yet a requirement. That might become the case as early as the 2019-20 school year.
‘We could have eight or nine tech academies, but the reality is We haven’t had the s t u d e n t i n t e r e s t .’ Donna Gilley, Metro SchoolS
Additionally, all high school freshmen “play” brain games developed by Nashville-based startup YouScience, which runs their results through an algorithm to help identify students with natural abilities and aptitudes for tech-based careers. Schools can then provide targeted opportunities, such as tech camps, to these students. This spring, MNPS announced its Early College High School Program in partnership with Nashville State Community College. At the end of the
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four-year, no-cost program, students will simultaneously earn their high school diploma and an associate degree in IT. As part of the Tennessee Transfer Pathways program, the degree earned will transfer to 13 public and private institutions, including Tennessee State University and Lipscomb University, for completion toward a bachelor’s degree. A similar program at Columbia State Community College gives incoming freshmen in Williamson County Schools the opportunity to graduate high school with a technical certificate in web design and mobile apps. The program, called WiT Academy, started last fall and combines dual credit (high school-level) and dual enrollment (college-level) courses. Dr. Dearl Lampley, dean of the school’s sciences, technology and mathematics division, says it’s too early to gauge interest in the WiT Academy (all eligible students are still freshmen), but he estimates there are between 25 and 30 students who are on the track. “When they finish in three years, they will have a skill set that will be marketable in web design and mobile apps,” he says. “They could go straight into the workforce or continue their education.” Dwayne Towell, associate dean of undergraduate programs at Lipscomb’s College of Computing and Technology, is hopeful that programs like the Early College High School program will be successful in filling the tech pipeline. He thinks the economics of the program will be attractive to students, who will be able to earn a four-year degree in just two years. He also expects it to make a dent in the gender gap that is so prevalent in the tech industry. “Overwhelmingly, our students are male,” says Towell, who estimates women make up about 10 percent of the undergraduate population in the college. “We want to be inclusive, but it’s hard. For whatever cultural or political or personal reasons cause this to be true, it seems that we only have half the population even thinking about computer science. Sometimes it feels like we’re fighting an unwinnable battle.” Sparking that interest at a younger age has been shown to help, which is why Lipscomb offers its freshman “CS Unplugged” course to K-8 educators as professional development. “We show them how to teach the scope of CS without using a computer at all,” he says. “The goal is to get students interested in STEM earlier so that by the time they get to college, we’re not fighting that battle as much.” Established in 2011 as a department within Lipscomb, the college of computing and technology has grown from three undergraduate
’It seems that we o n ly h a v e h a l f t h e populatIon even thInkIng about computer scIence. sometImes It feels lIke we’re fIghtIng an u n w I n n a b l e b a t t l e .’ D w ay n e T o w e l l , l i p s c o m b
majors to 10 and has added five graduate degrees — including data science and software engineering, which were both the first of their kind in the state. It moved into a 7,000-squarefoot dedicated classroom, lab and office space in 2015. This fall, Lipscomb will offer a new undergraduate degree in data analytics. But perhaps most impressive is the school’s 100 percent job placement rate. “Our goal at Lipscomb is to not just get our students jobs but to get them really good jobs,” Towell says. To that end, Lipscomb offers a range of networking opportunities for its students, thanks to partnerships with the Nashville Technology Council, Hashed Health and local tech employers. There’s a mentoring program in conjunction with Women in Technology in Tennessee, in which female computer science students are matched with successful women professionals in the tech industry to get advice and perspective on the job sector.
Helping entrepreneurs, apprentices and teachers At both Lipscomb and Vanderbilt’s The Wond’ry, the university’s innovation center that opened in 2016, students can engage with industry professionals during regular office hours. More than two dozen Mentors in Residence hold open office hours at The Wond’ry so that students can forge meaningful connections with industry leaders and receive one-on-one personalized
guidance. It’s just one of the many programs The Wond’ry offers to help Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff shape their early-stage ideas into viable enterprises. Monthly meetups, whether for aspiring CEOs and CTOs or those interested in emerging tech like virtual reality, also help forge connections between the tech industry and the Vanderbilt community. The Innovation Garage program, meanwhile, matches corporate partners with student-led teams that help them identify and develop disruptive solutions to specific business or industry problems. “We serve as a connector to others, both within the Vanderbilt community and to opportunities externally,” says Robert Grajewski, executive director. “For those who engage with The Wond’ry, our goal is that they will gain the skill sets needed to be better innovators and entrepreneurial leaders as they approach the real world.” Last fall, The Wond’ry, in collaboration with the Vanderbilt Institute in Surgery and Engineering, won a five-year, $500,000 National Science Foundation grant to become an Innovation Corps site. As one of 70 I-Corps centers across the country, The Wond’ry can provide funding as well as mentorship and guidance to students, faculty and staff who have already participated in one of the center’s qualifying programs and are closer to commercializing a STEM-related idea. Participants in the program team up with mentors from Launch Tennessee, a public-private partnership that fosters entrepreneurship statewide. Participation in I-Corps also can increase the likelihood of funding through the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, which are two of the largest sources of early-stage capital for technology commercialization in the country. Even before the I-Corps program, The Wond’ry had helped foster several successful tech ventures, including New York-based Skopos Labs, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze massive amounts of data to provide strategic forecasts, and Nashville-based Leaf Global Fintech, a blockchain-based money transfer platform that was named Best Bootstrapped Startup at SXSW in March (read more on page 8). Noah Robinson, a Vanderbilt graduate student who developed a virtual reality gaming system to treat opioid addiction, accelerated his technology at The Wond’ry. Today, his system is being piloted at Nashville-based JourneyPure, which operates more than a dozen in-patient and outpatient addiction treatment centers in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Florida.
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SCHOOLS
“Historically, our students were not as familiar with the resources available to them locally to foster entrepreneurship,” Grajewski says. “As a result, when they graduated, they would take their ideas and their talent to the coasts, where they knew there were thriving ecosystems. But at The Wond’ry, we show them that they don’t need to go to Silicon Valley to pursue a dream or New York to get funding. The resources they need are all here.” Through The Wond’ry, Vanderbilt students also are placed in tech-related internships at a variety of workplaces, from startups to large corporations. At press time, Lampley of Columbia State was finalizing the details of what he hopes will be a new opportunity for students this fall — an IT apprenticeship program. “We’ve narrowed it down to one industry partner to do a small pilot, based on similar programs we’ve studied in Seattle and South Carolina,” he says. “The students who are selected will become employees of the company just as they’re starting the fall semester here. There won’t be guaranteed employment once they finish the apprenticeship, but we expect [employment] would be highly likely.” Lampley believes the program, which could run 12 to 18 months, might be especially attractive to beneficiaries of the TN Reconnect program, which provides scholarships for adults to attend a community college tuition-free. “We thought that would be a really good combination,” he says. “For students who had some IT background or maybe needed a career change, tuition would be free for those students who have not yet earned an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.” While Columbia State’s program has a relatively short timeframe for filling the tech pipeline, for the most part, the runway is long — and it’s littered with obstacles, including unequal access to tech exposure for disadvantaged students.
To help address that, the Tech Council, in partnership with Leadership Tennessee and Conexión Américas, offers STEM afterschool activities to Hispanic students. The Metro Action Commission’s MAC4JOBS program provides participants the opportunity to plan a career path that will lead to gainful employment within high-demand industries in the area, including tech. The program is being piloted with older siblings of children enrolled in the agency’s Head Start and Early Head Start programs, as well as students enrolled in its adult education program. Another obstacle is a shortage of IT teachers. For example, at Overton High School, the IT Academy has had four networking teachers in the past five years. “We’ve had trouble keeping an IT teacher longer than a year or two, because they quickly realize that they have the knowledge and skills to make $80,000 a year as a programmer,” she says. “It’s hard to compete with that.” To help fill the gap, Gilley is working to form a partnership with Lipscomb’s College of Education to train STEM-subject teachers on embedding IT lessons into their regular curriculum. Sandi Hoff, vice president of education and talent development for the Tech Council, says the IT teacher shortage will be a focus of the group’s upcoming We Build Tech Summit in July. Specifically, participants will hear about a program in place at Memphis City Schools, which has addressed the shortage by pairing teachers of record with no IT experience to oversee management of the classroom while tech professionals serve as permanent guest speakers to teach the IT components. “I understand checks and balances, but in an area like IT, it’s very hard to make the current system work,” Gilley says. “And I can’t offer the class if I don’t have the teacher.”
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Jurnell Cockhren, Fallon Wilson and Jarrett Strickland
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HIGH TIME TO MOVE THE NEEDLE M e e t s o M e o f t h e p r o b l e M - s o lv e r s ta r g e t i n g the coMplex — and not-unique-to-nashville — issues of diversity and inclusion in tech by lena anthony
ust three months after its founding and with no funding to speak of, Black in Tech Nashville scored its first big win by hosting Tech Inclusion Nashville, a one-day forum highlighting the need for a diverse and inclusive tech industry. Co-hosted by Change Catalyst, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit dedicated to advancing diversity and inclusion in tech, the August 2017 event was among the first of its kind in the South and welcomed thought leaders and representatives of many genders, races, ethnicities, religions, countries of origin, sexual orientations, visible and invisible abilities and ages as well as veterans and people who were formerly incarcerated — basically every possible group that has been and could be marginalized in and by the tech sector.
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It was the sort of big play that Black in Tech Nashville co-founders Fallon Wilson, Jurnell Cockhren and Jarrett Strickland were certain would get the fledgling organization the credibility it needed to create meaningful change in Nashville’s tech ecosystem. But 10 months and several small wins later, the co-founders say they’re still struggling to be heard. “As a black tech organization in Nashville, we knew we’d have to do something really big in order to be taken seriously,” says Wilson, who serves as CEO. “You’d think a city-wide event, something our competitors and colleagues couldn’t even do, would be enough. But it wasn’t.” It’s not for lack of experience. Wilson has a data science background and doctorate in social service administration; Cockhren is a computer
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programmer and founder of Nashville-based civic tech firm Sophicware; Strickland is a UBS wealth planning associate who sees technology as the future for strong, financially solvent communities. “Between the three of us, we have all the skill sets covered,” she says. What they don’t have — at least not yet — is the data to properly frame the debate. In January, Black in Tech Nashville, which was a 2018 recipient of the Nashville Technology Council’s Diversity Game Changer Award, launched a citywide survey of black technologists, in which 90 percent of respondents said they strongly believe the Nashville tech community needs diversity. Now the organization is working with Chicago-based Black Tech Mecca to develop a diversity and inclusion scorecard for Nashville, which the group plans to publish this fall. The group doesn’t expect to be surprised by the findings. For example, the 2017 Pew Research Center study “Women and Men in STEM Often at Odds Over Workplace Equity” found that 57 percent of blacks working in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) jobs say their workplace pays too little attention to increasing racial and ethnic diversity, while 72 percent of blacks say a major reason why blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented in these jobs is because they face discrimination in recruiting, hiring and promotions. Even data specific to the broader Nashville MSA is available. According to Emsi, there are 9,630 racially diverse employees in the local tech workforce, while about 18,800 would put Nashville near the national average. Gender diversity, meanwhile, based on 16,375 female employees, is a little more than 10 percent below the national average.
Digesting, analyzing But shocking the industry into action isn’t the point of the scorecard, either. Rather, it’s to serve as a quantifiable starting point by which employers, government leaders and school systems can measure their progress. “We’re not seeing measurable impact because no one is measuring yet,” Cockhren says. “How can you possibly know if you’re doing a good job if there’s not a systematic metric of success?” At Asurion, also a 2018 NTC Diversity Game Changer Award recipient, this measurement is already under way. Of the company’s 17,000 employees, more than 3,000 are based in Middle Tennessee — and two-thirds of them are in tech jobs. But when asked how many of those
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positions were held by minorities, Yanika SmithBartley, vice president and special counsel, diversity and inclusion, didn’t have a clear answer. “We’re in the process of digesting and analyzing the data to understand where we stand,” she says. While its scorecard is still in progress, Asurion has already made headway on a number of diversity and inclusion initiatives, which started in 2014 when some of the newer senior leaders of the company, who previously led more diverse workplaces, looked around and asked: “Where’s the diversity?” “They were beginning to ask questions about the composition of our workforce and really became the champions of this initiative,” SmithBartley recalls. “Ironically, they were all white males who were saying we need to move the needle on this.” Around the same time, a group of female leaders at Asurion launched a workgroup to improve the work-life experience for women in the company. The group partnered with Asurion’s human resources team to designate expectant mother parking spots, improve maternity leave policies and standardize mother’s room requirements. Those two driving forces led to the formulation of a multi-pronged diversity and inclusion strategy, which includes the development of the scorecard and the formation of employee resources groups (ERGs), which are voluntary, employee-led groups that “foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with organizational mission, values, goals, business practices and objectives,” according to Catalyst, a global nonprofit that works to promote gender diversity in the workplace. Asurion started with four ERGs in 2016. Today, it has 10, with more than 700 Nashvillebased employees, including senior leaders, opting in. The most active ERGs represent a variety of underrepresented workers, including veteran, women, LGBT, black and Hispanic employees. Through its ERGs, Asurion partners with affinity organizations like Black in Tech Nashville and Women in Technology of Tennessee. The company also hosts unconscious bias training sessions; Smith-Bartley says more than 1,000 employees have participated so far. “We’re trying to convey that we all have biases and that it’s completely natural to have those biases,” she says. “At the same time, we’re equipping them with tools that will help them be intentionally inclusive. We want them to be thinking about this when they have conversations with coworkers and when they decide
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overhaul of the company’s recruiting and hiring practices that will focus on building a more robust pipeline of diverse candidates, both internally and externally. “Too many employers fall into the trap that there aren’t diverse candidates out there,” she says. “It’s a myth that women and minorities aren’t pursuing degrees and careers in STEM. They are, we’re just not doing a good enough job looking for them. When you’re intentional about it, you’ll see results.”
Go where the candidates are
Bill McCleskey
‘It’s a myth that women and mInorItIes aren’t pursuIng degrees and careers In stem. they are, we’re just not doIng a good enough j o b l o o k I n g f o r t h e m .’ Bill MCCleskey, MiTeCh
who they want to have lunch with. We want to embed this into our culture so thoroughly that inclusivity becomes natural.” Future trainings will focus not just on unconscious bias in the workplace but also bias in hiring. The NTC is planning similar educational opportunities through its newly created committee focused on diversity and inclusion. Chaired by Kerry Schrader, CEO and founder of Nashville-based tech startup Mixtroz, the committee is composed of representatives from more than a dozen local employers. Quarterly seminars aim to bring these and other employers together to share best practices related to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. New this year, Smith-Bartley has both a budget and a team, which will help prioritize diversity and inclusion even more. Up next is an
Having a diverse workforce isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also good for business, says Bill McCleskey, founder and CEO of Nashville-based MiTech, a national provider of commercial and residential telecommunications services. “Companies that promote inclusivity and equity have a competitive advantage over those that don’t,” he says. “The advantages are diverse perspectives, more well-rounded skill sets and a better culture, which ultimately leads to more revenue. These companies are more flexible and able to adjust to trends quicker. Ideally, these companies lead by example by proving that diversity and inclusion help set the pace for nextlevel achievement.” That’s also the driving mantra behind diversity and inclusion initiatives at Bridgestone Americas, which Susie Long, vice president of talent management and development, says are in the “very early stages.” As at Asurion, it was a change in senior leadership — specifically CEO Gordon Knapp and COO Bill Thompson — who both joined the company in September 2016, that compelled the company to place a heavier focus on diversity, particularly in recruiting technology positions at mid-level management and higher. “If you assemble a team of people who look like you, are you really going to get those innovative ideas, challenge the status quo and push your company forward? Probably not, because everyone is looking through the same lens,” she says. Recruiters at the company are charged with “casting a wider net” when assembling candidate pools, looking for professionals in other industries, like retail, where gender and racial diversity are more commonplace. At MiTech, McCleskey says he intentionally built a diverse team. At one point, his staff of 11 employees hailed from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia and China as well as the United States. “This was just the result of getting out there, networking like crazy and building a brand where diversity mattered,” he says.
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‘Establishing that basElinE and rEalizing that divErsity and inclusion havEn’t bEEn a priority might makE you look bad. but doing nothing will makE y o u l o o k E v E n w o r s E .’ Jurnell CoCkhren, SophiCware
Beating back bias key
Yanika Smith-Bartley
Cockhren of Black in Tech Nashville says one of the biggest mistakes companies make when recruiting is not looking in the right place for qualified candidates. “Companies want to maximize their time, so they tend to go with traditional recruiting agencies that lack diverse candidate pools,” he says. “Or they’re going on LinkedIn or to co-working spaces or networking events and all the other places where they think technologists go. But if you assume that’s where technologists go, you’re going to miss a lot of them, like the ones who can’t afford a co-working space.” Cockhren recommends partnering with historically black colleges and universities such as Tennessee State University and Fisk University, which both offer computer science degrees and regularly attract notable grant awards for techbased research. Partnerships with organizations like Black in Tech Nashville and WiTT can also
daniEl mEigs
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connect employers with diverse candidate pools. A new option is a technology-focused apprenticeship program that aims to address not just the tech job shortage — projected to be 1.8 million nationwide by 2024 — but also provide equitable access to high-paying jobs. Launching this year as a pilot program through the NTC, the program combines tuition-free industry certification training with paid, on-the-job training and mentoring for new employees. Sandi Hoff, ApprenTech Tennessee vice president of education and talent development, says the program will target women, veterans, minorities and other overlooked segments of the population, those who may have the aptitude but lack the opportunity. “The program will be a step not only toward increasing qualified technology workers, but also toward making the tech workforce more diverse,” Hoff says.
Another important step, says Black in Tech’s Wilson, is blind recruitment, which removes personally identifiable information from resumes, like name, gender, age and education, in order to control for bias and promote diversity. The practice, which Wilson says Nashville’s tech companies are woefully behind on, became more commonplace following a series of studies that found applicants with ethnic names needed to send out 50 percent more resumes to get a single callback than applicants with so-called white names. But it’s one thing to hire diverse workers; it’s another to keep them, says Wilson. “We hear from so many employers, ‘Give us access to your technologists,’ ” she says. “If I give you access, do you have the culture to retain them?” While initial efforts at Bridgestone have been focused on diversity in hiring, the company is also working on creating a culture that prioritizes inclusion. “We are still working through what this looks like for our business, but our goal is to create an environment where people want to stay and grow,” Long says. Last year, the Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll released findings of its Tech Leavers study for which they surveyed more than 2,000 adults who had voluntarily left a tech job within the last three years. The results point to culture as a critical factor in retaining minority tech workers. In the survey, 62 percent of respondents said they would have stayed
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‘Wooing tech companies to our city Without equity Won’t Work, b e c a u s e W e s i m p ly W o n ’ t h a v e t h e W o r k f o r c e t o p o W e r i t .’ FA L LO N W I L S O N , B L AC K I N T E C H N A S H V I L L E
The recent physical changes in Nashville’s landscape have been stunning — and there’s more to come. But growth also continues to change the MSA’s outlying areas. Those factors have created new development questions to answer and challenges to meet. Boom will tackle these topics and more.
ad close: august 10 materials due: august 17 in market: september
if their company had taken steps to create a more positive and respectful work environment, while 57 percent said they would have been likely to stay had their company taken steps to make the culture more fair and inclusive. The study also found that diversity and inclusion strategies, particularly ones that are comprehensive, were associated with significantly fewer experiences of unfairness, mistreatment, sexual harassment, bullying and stereotyping. The Kapor Center identifies five components of a comprehensive diversity and inclusion strategy, including having a diversity and inclusion director; setting explicit diversity goals; paying bonuses for employee referrals of candidates from underrepresented backgrounds; conducting unconscious bias training and establishing ERGs. Wilson says it’s not enough to implement just one initiative; a successful strategy must include multiple components — and it starts with admitting there’s a problem. “Companies don’t know how to talk about it without feeling like they’re sabotaging their mission,” Cockhren says. “Establishing that baseline and realizing that diversity and inclusion haven’t been a priority might make you look bad. But doing nothing will make you look even worse.” Wilson co-authored “Connected Nashville: A Vision for a Smarter City,” a report — started under
former Mayor Megan Barry and released in draft form earlier this year — that outlines a plan for an equitable smart city. She says tech employers should also take responsibility for addressing the systemic nature of bias in STEM that obstructs the pipeline for diverse candidates. This includes partnering with Metro Nashville Public Schools to provide much-needed tech instruction as well as looking for opportunities to participate or sponsor programs that encourage inclusivity in tech. “It’s critical that the Nashville tech sector look like the community it serves so it can represent the community it serves,” says Mayor David Briley. “I want to see Nashville’s tech companies do everything they can to recruit, promote and retain a diverse workforce, and my administration will do whatever we can to help those efforts. We’ll also keep working to ensure that a diverse group of entrepreneurs will take a close look at Nashville as a place to start, relocate and grow their businesses.” Among the recommendations in the Connected Nashville report is creating intentional tech programs that empower students from underrepresented communities and diverse language communities. “Technology for technology’s sake means nothing, and wooing tech companies to our city without equity won’t work, because we simply won’t have the workforce to power it,” Wilson says.
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When an organization is looking into additional security hardening options to abide with compliance requirements, move data to the cloud or even protect internal resources and employees, a few simple processes should be followed for a successful integration: 1.
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Develop an ROI/TCO analysis to identify current spending and potential savings. Implement the solution and ensure the team understands maintenance protocols. Periodically assess or ways to improve along with validating initial value requirements.
The day-to-day responsibility of security teams range from password resets to hardening servers for data protection. Activities are handled by various solution sets provided by different vendors. Simply managing the multitude of products becomes a larger undertaking than the actual work effort needed to perform a specific task. Assessing current tool sets along with consolidation to a select group of vendors will enable your team to be more efficient in their ability to identify issues in the environment and remediate quickly. As we all know, there is no way to truly defend against all potential perils since the threats are continuously morphing and preying on new vulnerabilities within environments. The best that we can do is consistently work to improve end user education and stay proactive with platform hardening initiatives.
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NEW AVENUES
Thinking about how the built environment can help create opportunities, build tech’s labor pool
ate last year, the Nashville Civic Design Center’s annual luncheon at the Music City Center featured keynote speaker Majora Carter, a New York-based expert on the built environment and placemaking. Carter’s talk to the roughly 750 people gathered covered a lot of ground, including about community development and Nashville’s opportunities to manage and smartly guide its growth — particularly in so-called “low-status” communities. In light of the Nashville technology community’s sharpening focus on creating career paths for groups that have long been underrepresented — primarily minorities and women — we have again teamed up with Ayumi Fukuda Bennett, our former collaborator on Southern/alpha, to excerpt some of Carter’s thoughts on creating opportunities in a few illustrations.
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THE RECRUITERS’ VIEW
Veteran search pros share their thoughts on supply, demand and where a lot of our talent is coming from
urther developing the region’s IT workforce is the biggest topic of conversation in Nashville tech circles. It’s more pervasive than the need for funding and more urgent than calls from some to diversify away from health IT, which is why we’ve devoted plenty of ink in this book to this topic. On the
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following pages, we look at workforce development from another angle, that of the recruiters being asked by employers large and small to find talent of all stripes. Contributing their perspectives here are: • Brian Hoppes, founding partner and CEO of Elevation Search Partners • Alex Naddell, director of Vaco Nashville’s technology practice • Ruth Smith, founder and CEO of DATalent Compared to five years ago, how has the Nashville technology job market changed, for better and for worse? NAddELL: Nashville’s tech community has grown rapidly over the past five years and there are more positions open now than ever. Demand is surpassing supply, so employers are having to be more active and creative in their talent acquisition strategies. SmItH: Overall, the competition for tech talent has increased significantly. There is more of
a supply-and-demand issue that is similar to the housing market currently. Companies are moving their operations and HQs to this area and existing companies are growing and expanding adding to the increased need for top technology talent. Increased competition for tech talent has driven up wages and companies are having to be more creative to retain top talent. HoppES: With Nashville being more in the spotlight as an attractive place to live, we’re seeing people come into the market with a newer set of skills in some of the latest technologies. The Emmas, the Eventbrites and others are working on platforms that are bringing that talent here. This has been a .NET town for so long, especially in health care IT. Now, costs are going up for sure. With some jobs, it seems like they’re doing so month to month. In some areas of application development, these people are highly sought after — and that comes with a price. But if you look closely, Nashville is still a low-cost city compared to others — even Birmingham in some cases.
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‘We’ve seeN THAT employers HAve beeN lAggINg A bIT WHeN IT comes To IdeNTIfyINg T A l e N T N e e d s , b u T T H e y A r e A b s o l u T e ly A W A r e o f T H e d e f I c I e N c y .’
Alex NAddell, VAco
and hear people talk about how low our unemployment rate is, you do worry about where the workers will come from. Are there tech jobs for which there’s a local surplus of talent? NAddELL: Health care IT business analysts and implementation project managers would have the greatest surplus based on the high ratio of health care companies in the Nashville area. SmITH: I can’t think of any roles where there is a surplus but there are some roles that are more in demand than others.
Which positions are most in demand right now? And is there enough talent here to meet that demand? NAddELL: All things Javascript, dev ops, and cloud-based engineering and administration. There is enough talent in Nashville to meet the demand, but it necessitates tapping into the right networks in order to uncover. SmITH: There is demand across all IT jobs currently but there is always demand for software developers across Java and .NET as well as strong demand for open source developers. A lot of companies have moved to the cloud so any skills with AWS, Azure or cloud architecture are in demand. Roles associated with business intelligence, analytics or data science also are in demand. HoppES: I don’t think there is enough talent here. But the pace at which people are moving here and the talents they’re bringing is helping. Still, when you go to Partnership 2020 meetings
If you’re reaching beyond Nashville to find IT talent, what are the cities in which you most often find success? NAddELL: We leverage our vast international network and deep local relationships to find the right skill set and the right culture fit. Outside of Nashville, we have noticed that the following cities have been successful at building a strong tech talent pipeline: Atlanta, Huntsville, Raleigh, Chattanooga and Charlotte. SmITH: There are a lot of people wanting to relocate to Nashville and people from all across the U.S. are moving here. In terms of target markets, Chicago has been a strong market to recruit from as well as Florida. Any cities that have significant snowfall, charge higher taxes than Tennessee and have a higher cost of living are all good target markets. HoppES: Just about anybody will listen to a story about coming to Nashville right now. We’re seeing a lot of people coming from the biggest markets: New York, Boston and Chicago are a few that stand out.
But funnily enough, in the last 90 days, we’ve placed three people from here in Nashville for jobs in New York. They have some flexibility in keeping their homes here and will commute but their employers are being forward-looking and acknowledging that most work can be done from just about anywhere. How well are employers doing when it comes to identifying their talent needs two to three years into the future? NAddELL: Given the uptick in number of technology companies and professionals in Nashville, we’ve seen that employers have been lagging a bit when it comes to identifying talent needs, but they are absolutely aware of the deficiency. SmITH: I know very few companies looking that far ahead. Of course, companies might be working on that internally with their HR and recruiting people. Staffing companies tend to be engaged when there is increased demand and internal recruiting can’t find all the talent needed. If you had to give the region’s colleges and universities a collective grade for preparing entry-level tech workers, what would that grade be? SmITH: Some area colleges are doing a better job than others when it comes to preparing their students. Students who receive hands-on experience using current technologies are more likely to be hired upon graduation, creating a win-win for companies and colleges. In addition to the technical aspects of preparing students, any focus on soft skills needed for the workplace is extremely beneficial. Internships are a great way for students to gain skills while they are in college and can help build their resume even before they graduate.
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‘I tHINk We’re goINg to see some superstArs emerge — ANd tHese people Are goINg to be youNg c o m p A r e d t o W H A t W e ’ v e s e e N .’ B r i a n H o p p e s , e l e vat i o n s e a r c H pa r t n e r s
A lot of big area employers are tied to specific search firms. How big of a problem is that for you specifically? And for the market as a whole? SmITH: This is an interesting question, since I just started my firm DATalent in November 2017. I know the uniqueness of our firm is that we have spent years in IT in the same role as many of our clients. We have hired hundreds of our own employees as well as staffed and managed our own IT projects so we are uniquely qualified to help the companies we work with. We offer collaborative and personalized service, which isn’t for everyone. Our clients say we might not present as many resumes for them to consider as some larger search firms but we present some of the most qualified candidates they receive, saving them time. Bigger isn’t always better. HoppES: That’s not a big issue for us because we focus on startups and young companies and are not really pursuing larger organizations. But it’s an interesting point and I think larger organizations do latch onto a small group of vendors. That may inhibit their access to certain candidates. What’s the next hot job in tech in Nashville?
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SmITH: I believe that is data science. The East and West coasts are ahead of the Nashville area in capabilities using data science. I’ve seen some companies who have data scientists or teams in place but there are many more just beginning to look at how data science can help their company. Data science is an evolving field, with many different disciplines including mathematics, statistics and software engineering contributing. A data scientist is expected to be one of the most in-demand positions over the next several years and Nashville is no exception. Companies that can guide other companies how to implement a data science strategy will be really in demand. HoppES: I don’t know that there’s one particular skill set that stands out. I’m excited to see more executive-level technologists in Nashville, particularly in health IT. There are great opportunities for people early in their careers to really step up into a CTO or CIO job, to really make a name for themselves. I think we’re going to see some superstar emerge — and these people are going to be young compared to what we’ve seen. We’re going to see more women, Indians and other people emerge who don’t look like the people in those positions now. That’s going to be exciting to watch.
DATA ON DEVELOPERS
Silicon Valley-based HackerRank, which has positioned itself as a meeting place for developers honing their skills and companies looking for highly rated talent, early this year published the 2018 Developer Skills Report featuring insights from nearly 40,000 developers around the world. Here are some data points from the wide-ranging study, which is one of several available at research.hackerrank.com.
Asked when they began coding, one in four was before they could drive. 5-10 years old
4.8% 21.1%
11-15
49.6%
16-20 19.4%
21-25 26+
5.2%
the u.k. and Australia have best cultivated interest in kids. (percentages show share of developers who started between ages 5 and 10.) united Kingdom
10.7%
Australia
10.3%
Netherlands
8.9%
Poland
7.7%
canada
7.2%
romania
7.0%
russia
7.0%
employers say skills assessments are the biggest challenge in the hiring process. hard to assess skills before onsite
60.8%
time-consuming interviews
47.5%
Not enough talent
41.1%
Not enough diverse candidates
28.3%
calibrating the job description
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BLOCKCHAIN
PAIN POINTS
With Bramble, Hashed Health looks to ease health care payment problems By STEphEn EllioTT
istribution of and compensation for health care services aren’t easy for anyone. That’s the underlying thesis of Bramble, a new product from Nashville-based blockchain health care company Hashed Health. “Fundamentally, bad transactional infrastructure makes for malfunctioning marketplaces” in health care, Corey Todaro, Hashed chief product officer, said while presenting Bramble to the Nashville Blockchain Meetup in April. He called the triad of traditional health care delivery — buyer, payer, provider — a “mediated malfunction.” Bramble, in the works since mid-2017, is a
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decentralized infrastructure for health care service marketplaces, according to Todaro. Hashed is in talks to pilot the platform this year, perhaps in smaller markets. It’s built atop Ethereum protocol and utilizes Solidity smart contract technology. “Bramble is transactional blockchain infrastructure to support
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a new generation of health care marketplaces that enable providers and buyers to rationally transact health care service offerings,” Todaro said at the event. “Utilizing blockchain for the transactional system removes it from the exclusive control of any market player, preventing its use to satisfy parochial interests versus the market’s interests.” According to Todaro, the health care economy as it functions now is not rational. Incentives for providers, consumers and payers are not aligned in the same ways that they are in other sectors of the economy. And Bramble is an attempt to soothe some of that inherent friction. With the platform, a health care delivery professional will create a non-fungible token that can be offered directly to the buyer or consumer, which could be an individual health care patient, an employer, health plan, government or other payer. Todaro admitted that there are a number of hurdles yet to overcome: technical, regulatory and more. But the main, he said, was inculturation. “None of us have ever thought about buying health care like this,” he said.
Techie+ will deliver an in-depth
inside look at the biggest questions facing Middle Tennessee’s tech sector. Based on an extensive survey, we’ll shine the light on what the region’s IT leaders think about topics such as workforce development, innovation, funding and Nashville’s standing among peer cities.
Space reservation: July 13 Ad creative due: July 20 In market: Mid August SponSored by
For additional information, please contact your account executive or Heather Cantrell Mullins at hcantrell@southcomm.com or 615.844.9252.
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BLOcKchAiN
BLOCKCHAIN BUILDING BLOCKS
Nashville company makes room for new ideas By STEpHEN ELLIoTT
TC Inc., one of the most visible blockchain-related businesses based in Nashville, wants to spread the gospel. The company, which via BTC Media produces Bitcoin Magazine, Distributed Ledger and several other publications and podcasts about blockchain technology, launched a research and development division last year called BTC Labs. “Through our different media properties and our conferences and our magazines, we’ve been covering the technology and all the impact it’s having on financial markets and health care and supply chain. But we realized that there was also a lot of opportunity to solve some of the same points around data sharing and interoperability and data integrity, but for the media industry,” says Tyler Evans, BTC chief technology officer.
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The incubator division started looking at blockchain projects addressing problems with intellectual property, copyright, licensing, royalties and attribution, among others. The first project to come to fruition, Po.et, began in-house as “a way to solve syndication or licensing use case for digital media articles,” Evans says. For example, if an editor at a BTC publication found a blog post on Medium or some other site that he or she wanted to republish or syndicate, the process of contacting the author, drafting a legal agreement, coming to terms on payment and other necessary steps create “a lot of friction,” perhaps more than the post itself is worth. Po.et’s platform, as a solution to that and other problems, “seeks to provide a global ledger of ownership and metadata about digital assets,” Evans says. After testing the platform for a few months, BTC decided Po.et should be spun off as its own entity.
Earlier this year, Jarrod Dicker joined Po.et as its first CEO after having served as vice president for innovation and commercial strategy at the Washington Post, where he worked on research and development in legacy media. Dicker says it was a perfect foundation from which to take the reins at Po.et, which seeks to partner with legacy media outlets like the Post as they begin incorporating blockchain technology into their distribution and other processes. “The company is still in its infancy in terms of growth,” Dicker says. “We’re building a tool that is necessary for creators — big and small — to be able to own their information, to be able to manage permissions in a simpler way, to create smart contracts and to dictate who can see the content and when, if [the content is] to cost anything and the criteria to unlock a certain piece of information.” The Po.et team is growing, Dicker adds, and now has more than 10 engineers. It is headquartered in New York, where Dicker is based, though it still maintains a significant presence in Nashville through its connection to BTC. Within a year, he expects the team to roll out its initial partnerships with traditional media organizations and marketers, though he adds Po.et will “be very selective … because it’s very early and we want to grow with the companies that are really looking to invest in this space.” BTC Labs also has a one-year plan. Po.et and other planned endeavors will be part of a suite of products “that all work together, that all harness the same technology in the background, that enable media companies to operate much more efficiently and leanly and with increased security and transparency,” Evans says. BTC Labs has its eye on a few different projects, Evans says, “that we think fit really well into that product suite that we hope to be able to bring one or two of those to market this year.”
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TRANSIT TECHNOLOGY MTA unveils advancements, preps for more by wILLIAm wILLIAmS
he Metro Transit Authority may still offer some old-school buses. But the agency is embracing new technology. Last year, MTA announced it would in 2018 institute a fare payment system to include mobile payments and reloadable electronic fare options. Already in place is a real-time bus stop sign pilot program for the Music City Circuit, the first step in what MTA officials hope becomes a system-wide effort that will allow riders, regardless of whether they have a smart phone or internet access, to plan their day using transit. MTA’s real-time bus information system feeds digital display bus stops and bus arrival displays
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along major routes and in the BRT-lite route shelters. It also feeds into a number of mobile applications riders can download on their phones to check bus arrivals and departures, with up-todate traffic conditions reflected on the app. For the fare payment system, MTA enlisted Genfare, which will provide new fare boxes for MTA vehicles, and Innovations in Transportation Inc., which will help overhaul the fare system, to oversee the effort. The new system is slated to include the following improvements and new technology: • smart media validators on Nashville MTA vehicles; • new ticket vending machines (TVMs); and, • the ability to purchase and reload smart cards at a variety of locations through a third-party retail distribution network, new TVMs and the Music City Central ticket window, as well as the ability to use smartphones to pay upon boarding the bus in lieu of traditional paper tickets. The new system will be account-based, which will allow riders to register their fare card, reload value and view transaction history online. On-board electronic transactions will be processed in real time and reconciled with the online account, allowing for the MTA and the Regional Transportation Authority to adopt new fare structures that make the fare payment
experience simple and seamless for customers while speeding up the boarding process. “By placing the option to purchase or reload your fare in the palm of your hand, using public transit to get around Nashville will become that much more of a logical and convenient choice,” MTA CEO Steve Bland says. “This exciting new innovation is a big step for Nashville as we work to help our riders move smarter in 2018 by making transit easier to use.” The full system will roll out over the course of 2019 and early 2020, with the mobile ticketing feature coming this year. Bland says MTA has a project in progress along Murfreesboro Pike, and in partnership with Metro Public Works, that will utilize transit signal priority measures at key intersections to extend green lights so that buses can remain on schedule and move more efficiently, as well as crosswalk signal synchronization to make pedestrian traffic safer. Also, MTA recently brought free public Wi-Fi to both the Music City Central downtown bus station and to Riverfront Station at First Avenue and Broadway for riders of the Music City Star. “In helping riders to move smarter,” Bland says, “we aim to make it easier for new residents and visitors — or for those simply unfamiliar with public transit — to use it.”
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TRACKING TECHNOLOGY AND TOURISM
Marketing pro Hannah Paramore oversees study involving changing nature of visitor centers by williAm williAmS
annah Paramore has found the spot at which technology and tourism intersect. And she views that spot as interesting, indeed. The executive vice president of Paramore Digital recently oversaw the company’s whitepaper research effort dubbed 2020 Focus. The study shows that technology and, more specifically, social media are yielding less need for conventional visitor centers and approaches to luring tourists. Not surprisingly, tourism entities are adapting as the transparency and immediacy of digital advertising has created pressure to show a positive return on investments. Knowing how prominent a digital focus should be for marketing a city’s tourism industry can be a challenge.
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The Post spoke to Paramore — who helped launch changingtourism.com — about that challenge. Your research shows social media and its accompanying technology are impacting conventional visitor centers and the marketing of cities to visitors. Thoughts? In the past, the visitor center and the printed vacation guide played major roles in vacation planning. People would begin planning their vacation by requesting a vacation guide. It was often the size of a magazine, including a directory listing of local businesses and information such as coupons and discounts for events, lodging, dining and activities in the area. The guide was the traveler’s first interaction with the destination. Over time, destinations could predict annual visitation by the number of vacation guide requests they had received. Once the travelers arrived in town, their first stop was the visitor center to pick up brochures on attractions, events, dining, etc., before heading to their hotel. Through the years, many destinations enhanced their visitor centers, creating gathering places where visitors could sample local wares and get a taste of the destination they were getting ready to experience through multi-media presentations and interaction with local artisans. Then digital happened and the need for a static vacation guide decreased as destination websites became more immersive and up-to-date. Destinations used the web to their advantage, creating rich experiences that drove interest in their destination.
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RISK ASSURANCE & ADVISORY SERVICES
What are the most effective metrics to measure a return on investment related to creating digital advertising? To get a pure measurement of success, it’s always best to focus on a metric that can’t be manipulated. The ultimate measure is gross receipts to the destination. Most CVBs are funded through the taxes
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Did your research reveal Nashville-centric elements? Nashville has a lot going for it, not only in what the city offers to the travelers but in the experience and stability of Butch Spyridon and his team at the Convention and Visitors Corp. From the Music City Center, which is responsible for the hotel boom we are seeing, to the focus on downtown, to the new Major League Soccer team, the Nashville CVC is deeply embedded in the economic development of the city. You can see the smart decisions they’ve made through the years, including the location of their visitor center. It’s in the heart of the city, which makes it the perfect place for visitors to find out what else Nashville has to offer outside of the downtown honky-tonk scene. Tourism partners across the city benefit from that
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How prominent should the digital focus be in this effort? It is almost undeniably the most important element of any destination’s strategic plan. While the media mix, including traditional media, is still important, the potential visitor’s first interaction and most frequent involvement with your destination is online. We are seeing digital budgets approaching 75 percent of destination’s total marketing budgets now.
Your research shows tourism contributes $7.6 trillion annually to the U.S. economy. How are technology and economic development correlating as it relates to tourism? Tourism and economic development should be tied at the hip. Investments in tourism-oriented products — such as hotels, convention centers, sports stadiums, museums and attractions — are the most capital-intensive projects in any area. They demand a more advanced, thoughtful infrastructure based on sustainability, not only for the visitors but for the locals as well. This balance of building a great place to live and to visit requires thoughtful planning and navigation. More and more across the country we are seeing tourism leaders get a seat at the economic development table. They bring the perspective of what the visitor wants to the discussion, which is good for everybody. When tourism has a seat at the economic development table, everyone wins. Technology has been a huge driver not only in tourism marketing but also in enhancing the visitor’s stay. Things like digital hotel keys, online check-ins that help you skip the line, text-based concierge service and RFID (radio frequency identification) wristbands that enable you to leave your wallet in the room make things easier for guests, while informing us about their habits. This helps us innovate products for them. The more we learn through the technology that tracks engagement and targets specific messages to visitors, the better we become at meeting their needs now and in the future.
MANAGED IT SOLUTIONS & TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING
TECHNOLOGY
Mobile and social combined had a huge effect, not only on destination website traffic but also on the visitor center. Social media is often the first stop now for advice on where to vacation. And destination websites, once the only online source of destination information, are forced to compete with the opinions of family, friends and other travelers published on other websites. With all of that information in the palm of their hands — including the maps, guides, coupons and information they used to depend on — the traveler has less need to stop at the visitor center. As traffic to many visitor centers has dropped, destinations are beginning to grapple with the problem of too much real estate, often in an area of town that has seen its better day. Some are creating mobile or pop-up visitor centers to take the information to the visitors rather than waiting for them to walk through the door. Others are testing more immersive experiences, such as virtual reality, as a means to pull people into their building.
exposure. We want our downtown scene to thrive because that is our brand, but there is so much more to do in Middle Tennessee. Our visitor center has a positive impact on tourism because of its location.
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visitors pay for their hotel rooms, also known as bed-tax collection. If tax receipts are up, everything is good. If they’re down, either your message isn’t resonating, or your destination has lost its luster. But there are other important measurements. We recommend watching growth and engagement in your social channels, first-time website visitors and return visitors to your website. Consistency is key. Measure the same things year over year to learn about the effect your marketing is having on driving tourism.
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strAteGY
SETTING THE COURSE
Three area CIOs share perspectives on roadmaps, managing expectations and their changing workforces
n early May, the Omni Nashville Hotel hosted the annual Nashville IT Symposium, a one-day gathering of senior tech leaders that combined strategic insights, in-depth breakout sessions and networking opportunities. Kicking off proceedings was a panel of three local CIOs discussing their high-level priorities and the changes they’re facing. The
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chat between Deanna Steele of Ingram Content Group; Hugh Hale of TennCare and Manish Shah of Community Health Systems was moderated by Post Editor Geert De Lombaerde. Here are some excerpts, edited for length and clarity, from that conversation. DE LOMBAERDE: We’re going to talk about being able to take the longer view in a business environment — and in Hugh’s case, a public sector environment — that is moving ever more quickly. How do you project and incorporate the pace of business change into what you’re trying to do day to day with your technology organization? STEELE: We’re privately held with more than $1.5 billion in revenue from physical and digital literary content distribution and we’ve grown through acquisitions. We acquired a company about a year and a half ago, and so our focus
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is on finishing this integration, which is due to happen this summer. However, we can’t lose sight of the long view, which has led us from a physical wholesale distribution kind of a company to much more of a digital organization. So we’re working constantly with our business partners and our commercial and our content organizations to understand what strategically they’re going after, so that we can then define our technology strategy to support that business growth. HALE: We handle the Medicaid population for the state. We take care of roughly 30 percent of the state of Tennessee. We pay for 50 percent of the kids’ health care in the state and about 52 percent of the births are paid for through TennCare. So when we look at health care, we look at things through a little bit of a different lens — kind of a macro lens — because of the size of the program. And as you all have experienced, health care costs are continuing to grow very rapidly, and we’re kind of in that perfect storm of not only health care costs growing but we’re getting older, so the need for health care is increasing and you’ve got a shortage of nurses and a shortage of doctors. We tend to look out three-to-five years. What do we need to do to be able to fill the gap to make sure that we take care of the most vulnerable population in the state of Tennessee? And we depend very heavily on technology to help fill that gap, to help ensure that every dollar spent is spent wisely. SHAH: We operate in 20 states and run about 125 acute-care hospitals and a whole economic environment that supports those hospitals — everything from freestanding EDs to urgent care outlets to physician practice. There are multiple dynamics in health care that actually force us to look from a long horizon and work backwards. The most primary is regulatory and how it drives the way in which we practice health care in this country. And then the whole industry is shifting to consumerism. As we think about that, technology certainly leads and plays a big role. It’s all about providing more choices for consumers in the way they get their care and then the technology layer overlays that. Mobility is becoming a big way in which health care is changing. So I think it always starts with a long-term horizon. Where you are trying to establish a capability and then have it universally deployed to
over 125 hospitals and master the actual ability to adopt and utilize, that generally has a long tail to it. It comes down to agility in the execution but a long-term view in the way you’re trying to achieve outcomes that really make a difference in patients’ lives. DE LOMBAERDE: Let’s talk about balancing those long-term strategic objectives with the inevitable adjustments that come along the way. How do you lay out a plan that you know will change — and quite quickly at times? HALE: It depends on the mission of the organization. Our mission being in the public sector is a lot different from a commercial world where profits matter and those kind of things. It’s incumbent upon me and my team to get ahead of the curve as far as what the business is going to need, so we have to understand fully the business objectives. We were talking before coming on stage about how the hiring of my top-level team has changed over the years. It used to be very heavily more technical than anything else. Now it tends to be more from the business side. Do you understand what an eligibility system is — not how to implement it, but what it does? Do you understand how Medicaid operates? Are you able to help guide the business and to help predict what’s coming? We’re working on projects now that are going to be implemented three or four years from now and, of course, no one knows exactly what’s going to be there. But we’ve got to help the business think strategically about that so that we can implement the things that are going to be effective not only today, but when we get there. SHAH: Like most organizations, we have a roadmap that, left alone, you would drive to in terms of how
you were evolving or optimizing. To ensure that we are dynamic about not just driving something because we put it on paper, we have a very active executive steering committee that drives the IT agenda and is very, very tightly coupled with our strategic business imperatives. The committee meets once a month and we give them the landscape: Here’s what’s bubbling up from the bottom up in terms of things that people would like to see us work on to optimize their world and then we take a top-down view of what’s important. That drives a lot of the conversation about whether we’re working on the right things or do we need to move our resources in a different direction because something has dramatically changed that we really need to focus on. DE LOMBAERDE: Has meeting once a month always been the frequency or have you sped it up over the years? SHAH: I’m relatively new in my role at Community. I’ve been in it for about two-and-a-half years and I couldn’t imagine being in my role without a strong relationship with our C-suite. Establishing that was probably my first priority. We used to do it quarterly and, given where we are as an organization and the dynamics of it, I strongly felt that we needed to change it. Getting that commitment was a big part of the equation. There were the debates about, “Can you really spend that time?” and I essentially said to them, “You can’t afford not to spend the time. Technology, unfortunately, is becoming one of your biggest spends.” STEELE: In our organization, we have so many people who understand the data, the people who have been in our publishing world for a really long time. If we were making decisions solely based on the technology without an understanding of what our business is actually driving to, we’d be making those decisions in a vacuum. So, of course, we have to set our long view and we do that from an executive perspective in three-year increments. We have to support keeping the lights on, of course. We have to support new emerging information as it occurs, so when we bought the company I mentioned a couple years ago, that changed what our organization was working on, and in some cases, some of those priorities. We also have to be agile enough to accommodate whatever happens to arise and then we’ve got to figure out how do we prioritize like everybody else.
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DE LOMBAERDE: In terms of needing more business-focused tech leaders or tech leadersto-be, is the education system working for you? HALE: Yes and no. Yes, in that you’re seeing a lot more candidates coming out of liberal arts schools or things like that — economic majors or even communication majors. But schools tend to, especially with technology, lag a little behind because it takes them a lot of time to change their curriculum around. I would love to see education turning out more business analyst types, giving students analytical skills, the ability to think logically, to get involved with the business to help understand their issues and document their requirements. I can get technical people. They’re much more available — actually not as much in Nashville, but I can go outside Nashville. Finding people that really can understand the business and have that ability to dig deep on business problems and help think things through? That is a very prized and difficult skill that I don’t think that we’re doing as much from an education system to prepare. But we will. It will shift but I just haven’t seen it yet. STEELE: One of the things that we’ve been working on is very close partnerships as well with the Nashville Software School or MTSU and some of the other universities around town. To your question about what’s the gap between what universities and colleges are turning out today and what we really value: That has to do with some of the practical and hands-on application of technology or business analytics or what have you. So we’re putting together an intern program for the first time to bring people onboard to just help them understand what it is that we look for in IT. I had the opportunity with one of my colleagues to present at MTSU to a group of both undergraduate and graduate students. And to a T, their questions were, “What would it take for me to get a job at your organization?” And our answers were often, “Well, it’s the handson experience but also understanding, connecting the dots, investing in yourself.” I like to say we’ll invest in people who invest in themselves. The advice we give often is, “Spend the time in extracurricular activities, join an affinity group, go out and find organizations you’re passionate about and bring that back.” I think a bit more of that type of advice would serve those students well.
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SHAH: I would take a little different opinion of the question. I think that the labor force in this market is actually significantly depleted. We’re actually competing with each other and unfortunately artificially inflating the compensation of the marketplace as a result. One of the things I’m really excited about is the ApprenTech Program that the Nashville Technology Council is embarking on. It’s modeled after the one in Seattle and I’m really hoping that that actually becomes an anchor to developing skills. We’ve got two problems. One is we’re not creating enough supply and the second is the supply that we do create isn’t staying here. It’s actually being recruited outside of the marketplace. HALE: I would totally agree with you. From a compensation standpoint, I’m at a decided disadvantage. But what we do is seek mission-oriented people that are stars. We’ve had to expand our efforts quite a bit. We’ve had to go outside Nashville, outside of Tennessee, even depend very heavily on our consulting friends to provide the resources that we just can’t find. I agree with you. The Nashville market is completely tapped out and that problem is only getting worse. STEELE: Yeah, we’re seeing the same thing. We’re having to look externally, bring people in as contract-to-hire, that type of thing. DE LOMBAERDE: Let’s transition to new technologies that you might be contemplating or being asked to incorporate. Am I allowed to bring up AI and blockchain without you throwing water bottles at me? STEELE: We’ve taken a big focus on business intelligence and analytics and we’ve actually developed a concept around data science and predictive. We’re using that in some pricing initiatives. That’s
about all I’m going to say on that but it’s been very productive thus far. We really focus on real results and we’ve been able to prove returns on those investments within a matter of months. Blockchain is interesting. Certainly, there is a lot of conversation around the applicability of blockchain in the music industry, and also potentially in the publishing industry, but we really have to figure out what those use cases are. Right now, those are conversations being had amongst a small affinity group of cross-functional team members. But we’re not investing real dollars quite yet. We still want to understand what’s happening there.
‘The Nashville markeT is c o m p l e T e ly T a p p e d o u T aNd ThaT problem is o N l y g e T T i N g w o r s e .’ HugH Hale, TennCare
SHAH: You’ll never confuse the IT organization at Community Health Systems with being a leader on the technology curve. It’s not really germane to our success. What I think we’re good at is seeing market penetration of an idea come to fruition and really executing it. We’re known as the agile execution machine, and I’m very proud of that. I think the cloud is real in health care — in terms of how we leverage technology, simplify technology, provide the consumption of it and actually bend the cost curve. I think mobility equally is very real, providing health care where it isn’t episodic. Health care has the potential of using technology to build an ongoing bond in the way patients are cared for and hopefully shift from episodic consumption to a proactive health management. Analytics is another big reality. Now that digitization has taken hold for about a decade, there’s really momentum. I’m not sure that I am at the AI end of things but I definitely think the era of machine learning and making machine decisions on behalf of somebody to actually validate things, that’s very real. Those are the areas that I would say we are probably pivoting toward.
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for our own bodies and our own health care. To make decisions on that information without the prevalence of doctors and nurses, technology is going to have to fill that gap. But we have to be really careful not to become totally dependent on it. Like Manish said, it’s just a tool. At the end of the day, I don’t want a computer deciding. I don’t want an ambulance to show up at my front door because I’m about to have a heart attack. That would be kind of creepy. DE LOMBAERDE: And maybe self-fulfilling, too. HALE: Exactly. Yeah, we’re getting to that point where we have to make some hard decisions on how invasive we want technology to be, but artificial intelligence and cognitive computing stand a great chance of really helping fill that gap.
Blockchain definitely has a play here but I think it’s probably way too early. The handshake of a patient to a payer and the provider being in the middle — being able to complete that entirety of a transaction in more real time has significant upside economics to the industry. But I would say by and large that it’s too easy to get caught up in the hype of technology. Stepping back and letting other people kind of explore it and figure out what really works is where we are. HALE: I agree with both my colleagues on the big three: AI/cognitive computing, analytics and blockchain. On blockchain, I agree completely that it is not ready for prime time. It hasn’t been stress tested enough. The use cases aren’t prevalent enough for me to get completely excited about it. It’s kind of on my B priority watchlist. The more intriguing thing is using technology to help fill in the gap of some of the care delivery. If you’re trying to lower costs, then it means taking care of patients more in the home,
‘We’ve been able to prove returns on data science investments Within a m a t t e r o f m o n t h s .’ Deanna Steele, Ingram Content group
where the lowest-cost delivery model is. And to do that, you’ve got to have very smart tools. You’ve got to be measuring and monitoring everything. I was reading recently about an iPotty that measures your urine stream and is checking you constantly. We’re getting into a world where we’re gonna have the ability to monitor everything constantly. We’re gonna have the internet of everything
DE LOMBAERDE: Do you feel like your positions now are more than before about managing other people’s expectations? People lower in your organization are saying, “We should do this” while others in the C-suite ask, “Why aren’t we doing this?” STEELE: There has always been a need to set and manage expectations, whether it be to a board in terms of what we’re doing with regard to our security profile or with regard to how we’re supporting our business growth or whether it be to my C-suite who are interested in a little slice of IT and a project here or there. Expectation management has become more important just in terms of being open and transparent about the types of things that we’re pursuing. So while someone may have an interest in setting up a blockchain environment to test and play with, if it’s taking away from our ruthless priorities,
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mented our Meaningful Use Stage 2 capability in 135 hospitals in 18 months. That was winning until you started checking under the hood for the utilization. What you find is that putting in technology is the starting point. The hard work actually begins getting people to truly experience it. It’s easy to fall in love with technology when it’s the bright shiny object but until you literally get into it and start pounding at it, you really don’t have a good appreciation for whether or not it really creates true value for the organization. DE LOMBAERDE: Looking out 12, 18, 24 months, what’s the one thing you’re most excited about that your organization is working on?
I would say, “It’s great to do on a weekend. Have fun but that can’t seep into our everyday set of priorities and deliverables.” HALE: I totally agree. Managing expectations is probably one of the biggest roles the CIO has. It should be probably 40 percent of my job description and it has to do with exactly what’s already been discussed. It’s reminding not only the Csuite, but our team that gets really excited about technology and about futuristic-type things, that these things are great but they’re just tools. It’s about reminding everyone what the mission is, keeping the patient in mind, keeping the person in mind. Does that really help lower costs? Does it really help improve quality of care? SHAH: If you asked our executive team to describe their CIO, they would tell you he’s the most anti-technology guy you’ll find, because I genuinely believe that technology is an enabler. My conversations with them always lead to a focus around ensuring that whatever it is that they just got done reading about that they think
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is a game changer, does it really align back to what our strategic imperatives are? And if they do, we’ll make the change. But if they’re not absolutely convinced… Because technology — beyond reading about it and watching it — is about the hard work of adoption and utilization. I would argue you can get to adoption relatively quickly. We imple-
HALE: One of the state and the governor’s priorities and the legislative priorities for the state of Tennessee is helping solve the opioid crisis. So going back to the data analytics discussion: I work very closely with the chief medical officer and using our analytics capability, we can help him with policy decisions that can actually help with the opioid crisis. It’s exciting to work on something that you can look at and see has a direct impact on lives. You see the number of lives that are lost go down. STEELE: Our industry will continue to morph and change, it will continue to consolidate. I think we’re positioned in a really unique place, particularly for independent authors and publishers as well as independent retailers, [because] we have the ability to remove barriers. We have to be very cognizant of our role in that and ensure that we’re providing not only the product in terms of the books or the e-books or the metadata or content, but also that we have an eye toward providing value-added services. As we move into even more digitization, that’s going to be where we can help differentiate.
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‘Technology — beyond reading abouT iT and waTching iT — is abouT The hard work of adopTion a n d u T i l i z a T i o n .’ Manish shah, Chs
SHAH: What excites me 18 months out is the promise of our patient-connected strategy that we’ve embarked on. We licensed an amazing platform that we just put into one of our markets in Naples, Florida, and I think it has a game-changing ability to modernize health care. We turned it on a week ago — a simple use case of sending out appointment reminders to our patients over text messaging — and we reached 90 percent of the population that was scheduled for appointments that week. Within the first 12 hours, we had 55 percent actually acknowledge and confirm their appointments. It will be interesting to look at the stats around conversion or no-shows. We’re gonna chip away at putting that into our entire system of all 20 states and all of our markets. We can deliver amazing capabilities once we know that we have reached that connectedness with our patients. So I’m really excited because I really do believe that this will truly change our trajectory. What worries me is the dynamic ebb and flow of the regulatory landscape in health care, which tends to go through a lot of ups and downs. Right now and rightfully so, the focus is really on interoperability. If that actually comes to fruition, it’s a game changer for health care. The ability to liquefy data among all of the providers and all of the care settings will change the way patients are cared for. That was the original promise when digitization was introduced to health care and […] I’m really excited that we’re finally looking at taking that on. If we can do it and we can get it right — and actually accelerate the momentum of it, get people behind it — it’s a scary thing, but I actually think it’s also a very exciting time.
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FOUNDATION IS BEING LAID FOR PRODUCTIVE AI Investor outlines machine learning’s promise, growing reach By GEERT DE LomBAERDE
rtificial intelligence is as hot a topic as anything in technology these days. Boards have made it a priority and recruiters and hiring managers are scrambling to get a hold of any data scientist who crosses their paths. On the investing side, KPMG says venture capital firms last year poured $12 billion into AI startups around the world — double the figure from 2016. In late April, Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner of venture capital firm Glasswing Ventures, spoke at a luncheon organized by Diversified Trust about the rise of AI and how it is, will be and could be widely applied to numerous parts of the economy. Seseri told the Diversified Trust group previous waves of artificial intelligence enthusiasm eventually disappointed for various reasons. What sets the current push apart, she said, is the development of neural networks, brain-in-
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spired tools that can be coached, that are synthesizing information and bringing context and connections to data — and continuously learning from the information it’s processing. And the companies that lay the right algorithms on top of a variety of relevant data that is properly labeled and coded, she added, can create a virtual loop of learning that builds a competitive advantage others simply cannot catch up to. The most important factor in setting the stage for such a success? “I often get asked whether it is the data that’s most important or the algorithms. […] Ideally, you’d like to have both. But if you had to pick only one? Data every time. Every single time,” Seseri said. “It’s a barrier to entry very much like patents used to be in the tech world.” The right sources of data, Seseri said, are critical to product strategy both when the data is first generated or acquired — there has to be value for the customer there from the start — and the feedback loop that guides future refinements and new product developments. A company starting from a unique point and applying smart
adjustments to its data can create tremendous value for its owners. But getting that starting point correct is very tricky if leaders aren’t asking the right questions about what they want their products to accomplish and setting the right basis for their information sets. That could mean giving customers an incentive to share potentially usable data. “The biggest mistake is to grab any kind of data,” Seseri said. “Just because you have it doesn’t mean you know what to do with it.” Among the players that are showing they know what to do with it are some apparel retailers. Leveraging what they know from past clothing purchases as well as other data and coupling it to augmented reality tech, compa-
‘Data is a barrier to entry very much like patents useD t o b e i n t h e t e c h w o r l D .’ Rudina SeSeRi, GlaSSwinG VentuReS
nies can create virtual dressing rooms showing shoppers just how a contemplated outfit will fit. Similarly, furniture sellers can conjure up an AR rendition of your living room with a virtual couch placed in it. A little way down the road is another application, Seseri said — one that resonates with plenty of people in an era of electronic intrusions and data theft. Think about the Target hack of 2014 or the more recent hack of Atlanta’s IT infrastructure: Seseri pointed out that regulatory standards govern only companies’ or agencies’ responses to such cybersecurity breaches. There isn’t an expectation of preventing such attacks — yet. “Protection has always been reactive. You get attacked and you respond,” Seseri said. “But with machine learnigns and AI, we can finally be at par or a step ahead.”
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BEHAVIOR CHANGE Virtual reality technology usage increases as cost, connectivity, quality are improved By HoLLy FLETcHER
f you haven’t thought about virtual reality as a mental health treatment option, that’s OK. Often, it’s not until people slip on a headset to enter a vast and undiscovered world for the first time that they understand its potential.
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“Most people are excited to try it because it’s novel,” says Aaron Gani, who left Humana as chief technology officer in early May to focus full-time on his virtual reality start-up BehaVR. “The most common response afterward is not how cool it was but, ‘Wow, that was powerful.’ They have a profound reaction about how powerful it felt.” There’s an avid group of VR evangelists who want to equip clinicians with headsets so that they can send patients home with them in an effort to treat, or perhaps prevent, the root causes of substance abuse or behavior-driven conditions. The technology existed for decades but cost, connectivity and the quality of technology were stumbling blocks. It wasn’t smooth enough to be immersive — which is necessary for treatment — and the equipment was too costly to be mainstream. Then Oculus Rift hit the market in 2016 and VR technology broke into the commercial psyche. “The closest we’ve had [as a comparison] is
dreaming,” says Lee Kebler, president of BlackBox Realities, a Nashville-based virtual reality development company. Now, people who enter the virtual world are greeted with vibrant color and realistic depth that almost instantly mutes the physical world.
From the physical world to one built by code Noah Robinson, a clinical psychology graduate student at Vanderbilt University, is using virtual reality to treat people who are admitted to JourneyPure At The River in Murfreesboro for substance abuse and addiction. “Someone can leave the rehab center and feel like they are in a forest, on the moon or in a concert hall,” Robinson says. Over the summer, Robinson will record the results of a two-semester study he and a cohort of undergraduate students conducted. Anecdotally, results indicate that people who use VR feel lasting impacts in the hours after undergoing a 30-minute stint in a headset.
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Robinson — whom both Gani and Kebler immediately identified as a go-to expert to talk about VR for treatment — knew he wanted to incorporate the technology into his studies before he arrived at Vanderbilt. Now, he’s the “man in Middle Tennessee, maybe in the U.S.,” Kebler says of Robinson. It’s easy to get swept up in the virtual world — giggling at the quirkiness of the tutorial or gently flinching in exploration. Kebler says executives who want to work with BlackBox revert to their inner 4-year-old when they try Tilt Brush, a 3D painting app Google developed. In fact, it was the reaction of a woman who had been on suicide watch to the mere introduction portion of the HTC virtual experience and a game that confirmed Robinson was on an interesting, and meaningful, path. Robinson offhandedly asked if the woman wanted to try VR after she had talked about her anxiety and some serious trauma. She’d been withdrawn and he hoped it would be a distraction for her. She started laughing and smiling almost immediately upon entering the virtual world. “There’s a lot going on in someone’s mind when they are in that situation,” Robinson says. “There was this transformation that was really powerful. That’s what I spent the last semester exploring.” A remaining, and vast, area of inquiry is how the brain processes virtual reality — and what it means to escape from the physical world to one built by code. Kebler’s BlackBox won’t yield anything violent — unless it’s a training program that’s not going to be disseminated. In earlier generations of VR, the user had to have “a very open imagination” to get lost in the technology because it wasn’t immersive — the person couldn’t get into what’s called being “immersed in a state of flow.” “We don’t really know how our brain interprets VR,” Kebler says. “‘I was in my office scuba diving’ — that’s not a sentence, but it is now.” Chris Gonzalez, director of the marriage and family therapy program at Lipscomb University, is curious about the possibilities. Technology isn’t a part of his practice — yet — but he has seen it at conferences and imagines potential for its use. “I really feel two ways about it,” Gonzalez says. “On the one hand, it’s kind of outsourcing the work and I’m wondering if the work gets done inside the person. But then, on the other hand, you can do things you might be afraid of
or can’t do by yourself. You may be doing it internally through the character by externalizing a part of yourself, to possibly be more experimental or take a risk you might not take.” He thinks clinicians are waiting for research. There is research on VR for exposure therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, distraction-based treatment for pain and education and skill measurement that was published in the late 1990s by Max North, Sarah North, Joseph Coble and Ralph Lamson, among others. The technology wasn’t practical at the time but it worked, Gani says. “Folks who are in the health care business are smart to be cautious caring for patients,” Gani says. Robinson wants to target the neural circuits to retrain the brain. “I want to prove that it works,” he says.
‘Not like buying an MRI machine for $1 million’ The cost of virtual reality headsets is plummeting. Just two days before Gani left Humana, the Oculus Go hit the market for $200. It’s a lightweight headset not much larger than an iPhone and the speakers are disguised in the headband. The HTC Vive headset is $499 although it needs to be connected to a computer that runs Windows. The fit is unobtrusive and the imagery is astonishingly crisp and seemingly tangible for something that could stow in a carry-on. Right now, Robinson is using the HTC and thinks it’s the best for therapy. But he picked up the Oculus Go soon after it released and talked about its potential. Robinson envisions a day when people are, perhaps, released earlier than otherwise from rehab and given a headset to take home to extend the connection to therapies and craving control approaches learned from treatment. The price of a headset, depending on the model and other necessary equipment, is either roughly the cost of one day in rehab — or less. Cost and the lack of reimbursement aren’t issues for the clients working with BehaVR. Insurance companies aren’t yet paying for treatment, but that treatment is being used in clinics to improve patient satisfaction and engagement — which means patients stick around the program, Gani says. The gear, which can be bought at Best Buy, isn’t the hurdle for clinicians because “it’s not like buying an MRI machine for $1 million,” Gonzalez says. He thinks clinicians are simply
waiting for some research before it’s widely implemented. “The new generation of technology appeared so quickly the world has yet to fully grasp what’s available,” Kebler says.
A future of multiple applications Patients could find themselves wearing headsets to treat a variety of problems with roots in behavior. BehaVR is in the market with a smoking cessation program and is weeks away from debuting a chronic pain program that will be used in physical therapy and surgery centers. Down the road, Gani plans to work with several addiction recovery programs and projects that his company will have programs to help with weight management and obesity. “Our goal is to address the holy grail of health care — behavior change. What’s at the core of many of those problems is emotional regulation,” Gani says. Gonzalez and Robinson both anticipate a time when group therapy is held without the participants being in the same room. Sometimes, Gonzalez says, it’s hard to get family members in the same room at the same time — maybe a relative who needs to be involved in a conversation lives in another state or a parent has a business trip. VR could put them together no matter where they are. The design of the treatment and programs will be important. The existence of a virtual world redefines “what’s real” because what the person recalls is just like an event in the physical world. Kebler talks about designing with intention and the acknowledgement that questions remain. For some people, the escape could be almost a replacing of one vice for another. Or it could be the idea that what the person does in VR is about her or him and not the technology. “You start replacing people’s realities and, of course, there’s an addiction factor but there’s also the ability to be improved people,” Kebler says. Robinson thinks it’s key to make sure the patient using VR is closely tied into a treatment program — and not using the technology independently to escape from a depressing, sad or upsetting reality. “People use drugs to make everything go away — for a relief of negative emotions,” said Robinson. “It’s potentially the same use as drugs (but a) completely fictional world, which is complex and separate from the real world. They are tuning out their anxieties and get relief.”
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REACHING BIG DATA MILESTONES
OnSomble’s professional development platform could be home to 500 million data points by year’s end By LENA ANTHoNy
arlier this year, OnSomble announced an important milestone for its OnRole adaptive learning platform. After just four years, (two of which were spent in beta), the company had collected over 200 million data points from more than 25,000 unique users — mostly clinicians and health care leaders completing professional development coursework at hospitals and health systems across the country. The news release focused on this number as a representation of the company’s astonishing growth. But it means so much more than that, says Enderson Miranda, who became CEO of OnSomble in December. Miranda and his team are hoping to leverage this vast store of data to create best practices and nationwide benchmarking for improved instructional design. Just not yet. “There’s a huge opportunity to leverage big data, but it’s really important to utilize it wisely,” Miranda says. “To be actionable, it must be quality data that is representative, relevant and real.” To become all of those things, OnSomble needs more data — at least 500 million data points, to be exact. The team also needs clients to opt into data sharing — currently, each client owns its own dataset.
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As massive as that 500 million figure sounds, it shouldn’t be too far a reach. Privately held OnSomble just finished one of its strongest quarters ever. All the while, data points continue to accumulate and Miranda says the 500 million goal could be hit as early as the end of this year. Customer referrals have been OnSomble’s biggest source of new business, but the company also has plans to market its platform here at home. Interestingly, OnSomble has no clients in the Middle Tennessee region, despite the company’s Nashville roots. In 2007, Shawn Mathis founded Nashville-based The Nurse Co., which, among other things, developed an online community for nurses. In 2012, The Nurse Co. acquired a San Francisco-based health care consulting firm, changed its name to OnSomble and began
building the OnRole platform. The beta version was released in 2013. Created by Nashville-based software development firm DevDigital — which is also partowner of OnSomble through its Kernel Equity arm — the cloud-based platform relies on machine learning and proprietary algorithms to deliver competency-based professional development, continuing education and individualized learning to its users. It also allows hospitals to collect and verify key professional development data needed for compliance with standards and certifications. “Learning platforms have been around for a long time,” Miranda says. “But it was a lot like drinking from a fire hose. Hospitals would purchase a large system and hope their clinicians
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24th Annual would find what they need. Missing was the ability to connect the user’s competency to what they actually need.” OnRole aggregates every aspect of the user experience and every action they take within the platform into a searchable and analyzable data structure. “There’s not a click that is wasted,” Miranda says. Proprietary algorithms allow OnSomble to then turn what was once highly subjective data into actionable objective information. “The adaptive learning algorithms not only identify areas of improvement for the individual users and groups, but also help identify the most beneficial educational content to develop the users professionally in a balanced and effective manner,” says DevDigital Senior Project Manager and Partner Thomas Ross, who also serves as OnSomble’s chief technology officer. “The more data provided to the algorithms, the less user input is required, allowing the system to identify the ROI for each course offering and adjust as needed.” OnSomble is not in the content business, however. Hospitals are free to use their own education materials, or OnSomble can connect them to education from one of its content partners. “We don’t want to be in the content business,” Miranda says. “Our competency is building this platform. We have aligned with organizations that have a long-term track record of providing quality, reliable, up-to-date and evidencebased content.” When OnSomble first started marketing OnRole in 2015, the company had two divisions — health care and non-health care. The latter “just outgrew the other one so substantially,” Miranda says, that it has been the focus. But that’s beginning to change. In March, Oklahoma Christian University was granted initial approval from that state’s Higher Learning Commission for a com-
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petency-based online bachelor’s program for nursing that will be hosted on the OnRole platform. While competency-based education is not a new concept, adoption and integration at the university level is still in its early stages. The months-long approval process was arduous, but worth it, Miranda says: “This opens a range of new opportunities for us in the academic world.” The program is set to enter beta in the fall, with a full launch planned for next year. As OnSomble brings on new clients, Miranda’s not worried about growing pains; the platform was built for scale. “OnRole was built as a multitiered, multi-tenency platform using shared proprietary code within separate databases,” Ross explains. “This allows the fastest deployment of updates while allowing us to ensure the strongest data segregation and security between clients. The separate databases and the use of virtualization technology allow us to scale seamlessly as the need arises across multiple servers and geographical locations.” With just six full-time employees — that’s counting Miranda — OnSomble relies on strategic partnerships with companies like DevDigital to keep up with growing demand. “No matter how big we get, the platform will always be a response to what our clients are looking for,” Miranda says. To ensure that, the company funnels most of its funding to software development. OnSomble holds weekly meetings with the software team in order to discuss strategic software development priorities and current projects, which can be allocated to a team of more than 70 programmers based on each developer’s expertise. “We are constantly looking at ways to enhance the platform,” Miranda says. “We’ve never stopped building since we launched, and we don’t expect to.”
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A TAXING SITUATION Technology companies should assess all implications of tax reform BY SASAN ZAMANI
he Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is unquestionably the most significant change to U.S. tax law since the 1980s. While it is true many businesses will now be subject to lower tax rates, the devil is always in the details when you’re dealing with Congress. Along with lower tax rates, taxpayers are also left with many other changes in tax law that could have a major impact on their annual tax liability. So what are some of the most significant implications of tax reform for technology companies to consider? Many technology companies are structured as “pass-through entities,” meaning their profits are passed on to the owners as income
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on their personal tax returns. To provide the owners of passthrough entities a tax benefit (and to provide a benefit similar to the reduced corporate rates described later), Congress added a potential 20 percent deduction of passthrough income for many passthrough businesses. Software, hardware and technology services companies structured as passthrough entities may all qualify for this deduction (assuming there are net annual profits to apply against the deduction). The tax cut for C-corporations to 21 percent from 35 percent was the headline news of the tax package. As the C-corporation structure is often the preferred legal structure for both pre- and postrevenue technology companies, this change to tax law is significant for any companies with annual taxable income. Another hot topic for technology companies organized as Ccorporations is the changes in a corporation’s ability to utilize prior net operating losses (NOLs). In the past, a loss from one year could be “carried back” to offset income in prior years (thereby creating a refund) or carried forward to offset future income. Under the new law, NOLs generated in 2018 or later cannot be carried back to offset income in prior years. Further, the new law caps the abil-
ity to utilize NOLs generated after 2017 at 80 percent of taxable income (meaning 20 percent of your taxable income would be taxed at the 21 percent corporate tax rate, if pre-2018 NOLs are not available). If your company has NOLs, annual tax planning is advisable to evaluate your company’s ability to utilize NOLs and its impact on operating cash flows. Another significant change for technology companies — which thus far has not received much attention due to its delayed implementation — is the ability to deduct research and development expenses. In the past, taxpayers had the option to deduct, amortize or charge R&D expenses to a capital account. Many technology companies choose to deduct as the costs are incurred. For tax years beginning after 2021, companies will no longer be able to immediately expense R&D costs; instead, they will be required to amortize R&D expenses over a period of at least five years. Research performed outside of the U.S. must be deducted over 15 years. This change may impact your R&D planning. Companies that invest heavily in R&D should monitor this situation, as we expect to see a great deal of lobbying to remove this provision. While many of the implications of the new tax law remain to be determined, one thing that is immediately clear is the need to look carefully at how you operate your business under the new rules. Understanding the changes with your tax advisor to be sure you have adopted the most tax-advantageous positions possible should be a top priority for 2018.
Sasan Zamani is a tax partner with Frazier & Deeter CPAs and Advisors.
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Trinisys
HEALTH IT
CONNECT, CONVERT, COMBINE
Data management venture Trinisys is adding other sectors to its core health care work
assaging and moving mountains of data for health care organizations is Trinisys’ bread and butter. The 14-year-old company grew to more than 50 people before last year buying a Georgia peer that specializes in working with ambulatory care providers. The deal rounded out a customer base that had been focused on big medical centers and gave Trinisys a solid national footprint into which it can cross-sell. But CEO Antoine Agassi and his team also are looking beyond their core health care service line. Agassi spoke with Post Editor Geert De Lombaerde about his firm’s evolution and how he expects it will continue to grow in both health care and other industry verticals.
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How have Trinisys’ products evolved in recent years? Our platform continues to be the backbone of innovation and expanded functionalities. We have invested heavily in our IP and as a result, our Convergence platform is scaling nicely in the health care ecosystem and beyond as it pertains to “connect, convert and combine.” In addition, our Clear-
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View legacy data archival solution is now the gold standard used by many organizations that are looking to sunset old systems, improve clients’/patients’ access and streamline their records view. A couple of items are really driving our growth: One, old systems are no longer strategic or are being discontinued because of excessive maintenance costs. And two, ransomware/cyberliability is becoming a big deal. There are ever-increasing compliance issues for old systems that have not been updated and lack the latest security patches. When you came aboard, was your focus on health care only or did you see an opportunity to bridge to other sectors? First, we invested heavily to make sure our platform is absolutely the best. Health care is the majority of our business today. However, our medical malpractice, large payers and financial lines of business are growing nicely — both in licensed software and in software as a service, where we sell three- to five-year subscriptions. Our platform is really industryagnostic. Our growth really comes down to where we focus. It matters to us to be thoughtful about the markets we’re aiming at. Instead of being a mile wide and an inch deep, we’d much rather be half a mile deep and 10 inches wide. We are very thoughtful about that. Our payer business has been doubling quarter over quarter and our med mal customers are the 11 largest in the country. On the financial side, we have some services that should really start gaining traction early next year. Right now, that’s about 10 percent of our business. How have you organized the company and your team to build beyond health care in a meaningful way? We have been executing on that over the last year with nice results. We have a team of engineers be-
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hind the platform but for each vertical, we need subject matter experts to recruit, foster and grow that business. Each line of business needs that focus, expertise and knowledge. So we have sales and marketing people in each group. If you look at our website today, you can see how we’re building out those groups. Our acquisition of MICA last year accelerated our subject matter expertise in that area. It brought a tremendous amount of depth to our portfolio. The finance sector’s data management situation looks a lot like that in health care: lots of regulations, lots of acquisitions, mountains of information dispersed across platforms. Is that a natural growth market? Absolutely and our platform is currently being deployed by some of the largest payers in Tennessee along with some of the largest mortgage firms. How else do you see Trinisys growing outside of health care? We continue to focus on solving real problems that streamline processes and reduce costs. In addition, we are in the forefront working with our nationwide clients base on emerging technology like blockchain, interoperability, transparency and compliance. On blockchain, we need to be at the forefront of the technologies our customers are invested in. We have started to spend some capital to look at how our products can connect to block chains. If a customer comes to us and says it has records, images or whatever to put onto a blockchain platform, we want to be in a position to help them get there. Their data needs to be consolidated, validated, have a good audit trail and good normalization. It’s a journey; you can’t just jump on. So our conversion services, the ClearView platform, is absolutely critical to them.
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WATCH THE BOTTOM LEFT QUADRANT One health IT CEO’s prescription for innovation By GEERT DE LomBAERDE
ruly disruptive innovation is rarely planned out and organized. But Jonathan Bush, the CEO of $1.2 billion health IT services provider athenahealth, thinks health care’s market leaders have plenty to learn from the mistakes of other industries’ big incumbents. Speaking to members of the Tennessee chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in April, Bush outlined some thoughts he has refined over the past few years about sustaining — or generating from scratch — an innovation mindset and avoiding the fatand-lazy potential pitfalls of market leadership. He used a four-square grid that has upstarts in the bottom left scrapping to compete, innovate and grow. Sector leaders are in the top right corner, protecting and defending their turf but no longer growing at a meaningful pace. Yes, companies in the upper right quadrant got there by making a better product and marketing it more effectively than their competitors. Still, over time, their market share plateaus and high customer satisfaction ratings don’t mean they are free from being disrupted. “You’ve already won that experience,” Bush said at the event. “The question is, who’s going to come out of the bottom left quadrant?” It’s not a matter of if, Bush said, adding that
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“the Netflixes of health care are being born” and are taking aim at the vulnerabilities of those in the upper right quadrant. But established players don’t have to throw up their arms and wait for atrophy and pain. Here’s Bush’s blueprint for response: • Virtualize operations: Blockbuster gave way to Netflix and taxis were elbowed aside by ridesharing applications. In health care, traditional providers — and their relatively high-cost legacy operations — are seeing ever more patients migrate to retail or telemedicine settings. There are massive opportunities to integrate technology through tools such as online appointment scheduling. But even in 2018, many hospitals and doctors’ offices aren’t yet paying enough attention: An athenahealth poll showed only one in five view virtualizing care as a high priority. • Free up capacity: Bush pointed to data from athenahealth and elsewhere to show that health care incumbents can make gains in efficiency. For instance, more than half of expensive medical equipment sits idle at any given point in time, and 27 percent of doctors’ calendars go unfilled each week. Using analytics and automa-
tion tools will help reverse the trend of doctors — especially those at large health systems — seeing fewer patients than they have in the past. • Generate demand: Bush told the HIMSS audience health care players can do a much better job of product management and marketing as a means of bringing more patients through their doors. For instance, providers can cover the follow-up physical therapy costs of a hip replacement patient or fly in family members of a transplant recipient. Think of it as bundling — and not in the value-based care way — services in a way similar to how resort operators include perks or retailers wrap gifts at no extra charge. None of this is easy. Bush freely admitted to the HIMSS crowd gathered at AmSurg’s offices in Green Hills that he essentially had to build a team from scratch to focus on teasing out and developing unconventional approaches to what athenahealth does. But for market leaders in the upper right quadrant, staying on the path that got them here is likely to result in them being “right and friends and partners — and dead.” “If you do this, you will win — but in a different market than you’re in today,” he said.
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ASSESSING THE POTENTIAL OF AN AMAZON-BERKSHIREJPMORGAN FORAY INTO HEALTH CARE Christopher Rehm
The HIMSS gathering that featured Jonathan Bush also brought together a panel of speakers under the banner “Innovators & Incumbents: Better Together.” One of the questions moderator Mike Biselli of Catalyst HTI asked focused on how the new health care project between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase might impact the industry. The three
blue-chip names said in late January said they want to improve employee satisfaction and cut costs through a new venture focused on technology, aimed at transparency and “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.” The HIMSS panelists who responded were unanimously blunt in saying there’s an opening for a new
approach along the lines of what Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan are cooking up. Lisa Henderson, the COO of Synchronous Health, said the industry needs to “stop being so damn proud of ourselves” and be open to innovative ideas. Here’s what some other speakers said about the fledgling AmazonBerkshire-JPMorgan collaboration: • Bharat Sutariya, chief medical officer and vice president of population health at Cerner: “It’s already moving the meter even if nothing really happens in the next 12 to 24 months. Broadly speaking, it looks like they’re focusing more on ‘health’ than ‘care’ but I think it’s a great discussion started to take us down that road.” • Christopher Rehm, chief medical information officer at LifePoint
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Health: “They’re going to go after all the waste. And they will force all of us to focus on the delivery of care that is of high quality, safe and efficient. We have to stop talking about hospitals, emergency departments, clinics and other defined places like that. It’s just about the care.” • Vic Gatto, co-founder and CEO of Jumpstart Foundry: “We’re seeing a lot of companies thinking about this. And we’ve been waiting for years for CMS to say something on this front. I’ll also say this: We in health care are Detroit in 1985 — fat and happy and we’ve been dormant for a long time. And Nashville specifically is, too. In five years, we’re going to look like Detroit after the Japanese took over.” > GEERT DE LombAERDE
SMARTER SPORTS JOIN US ON POST SPORTS AS W E C O V E R A N D A N A LY Z E T H E NASHVILLE SPORTS SCENE.
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Bill Wright
MAKING A REAL IMPACT
Tech community rallies for hackathon benefiting 20 nonprofits HCA Healthcare organized the first Hack for the Community hackathon in 2014, pulling together about 70 members of its technology team to work with eight area nonprofits on projects that can pay big dividends. This year’s event — held in mid-April and overseen by HCA Senior Director of Learning Solutions Bill Wright and Karen Thompson, an assistant vice president in the company’s strategy and innovation group — included projects for 20 nonprofits, whose projects were picked from nearly 40 applications. The number of volunteers has grown to 200, enough to fill much of Tech Hill Commons, the home of the Nashville Software School and the Nashville Technology Council. Less than half of the people working on the projects over two days were from HCA, with fellow big names such as Asurion, HealthStream and Ingram also making available teams of technologists. ERIC ENGLAND
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ADDING CAPACITY FOR RESPITE The Tennessee Respite Coalition gives people caring for a loved one a $600 budget to hire help so that they can take a break, be it by going to dinner or a movie or simply getting some relaxation. Caregivers are reimbursed for their care expenses but the process of checking on the status of those transactions — “Did you get my paperwork?” and “When should I expect the deposit?” — can suck up a lot of time for Executive Director Jennifer Abernathy and her team of three as they seek to cover the entire state. So Abernathy again threw her organization’s name into the hat for Hack for the Community — she says a previous project to automate the caregiver application process and directly connect it to the coalition’s Salesforce system was “a huge success” — and was paired with Hunter Groves and Logan Hartline from HCA Healthcare to develop a system that fishes updates directly from Salesforce to text status updates to caregivers. The project is expected to save the small Respite Coalition team about three hours each week.
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Hunter Groves
Logan Hartline
As the line for lunch on Day 2 of hack for the Community was growing longer, Groves and hartline sat down with Post editor Geert De Lombaerde to talk about how they approach their time at a hackathon.
Yes, you have your out-of-office notice on but there are still some things you have to take care of.
What’s the biggest adjustment coming from the office to spending two days here?
ahead of time, asking what success looks like. It’s helpful to connect what we’re doing to their goals.
Given the compressed timeframe, how do you organize the workflow among the team?
GroVES: We’re moving from a controlled environment to a place where everything is compressed and you have to have something to deliver. The past two I’ve done, we didn’t get beyond proof of concept. This time, we’ll actually be making a real impact. We’ve done a little more prep work and I feel better about what’ll come from it.
When you’re working in a room where 50 or more others are busy on their own projects, chatting away and coming and going, do you sometimes just want to stand up and ask everyone to please pipe it down for a bit?
GroVES: We look to set up people with paths. For instance, we need data so that we can test records so someone needs to assemble that. Someone needs to walk through the entire process we’re working on. There’s a lot of dividing up and reconnecting.
HArtLINE: We get to ask questions at work, dig in on what we’re doing and relate it to other things. Here, the focus really is on, “We just need this one thing.” It’s definitely helpful to set context for our groups
GroVES: Yeah, maybe. When I got here and started unpacking my bag, I immediately realized I had forgotten my headphones and thought that was going to be trouble. But once you put your head down and get to work, the time gets rolling and it’s not a problem. The biggest distraction is checking work email.
HArtLINE: I have toddlers at home so I barely know what quiet is anymore.
Are there things you’ve taken from these hackathons and implemented them into your job? HArtLINE: My staff of 10 and four others spend about two and a half hours every Friday morning around a specific design problem
or challenge. We get through about a week’s worth of work in under three hours, which has helped our team shift our thinking that oftentimes you can get a lot done in a short amount of time with clear scope, focus and dedicated people. GroVES: I like seeing how other teams solve problems similar to the one we’re working on. It opens me up to innovative solutions and creative ways to think about things. We’re working on how to send texts out of Salesforce and others are, too. (Groves manages HCA’s relationship with Salesforce.) Their approaches have pros and cons compared to ours and it’s interesting to see how they got there. HArtLINE: Coming here is a great way to get out of the office and interact with cool people from other companies. And it’s cool to see the broad support from companies that usually might be competitors. There are a lot of wicked smart people across the industry in Nashville.
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The project priorities for those dollars are shifting pretty rapidly. Privacy/security and revenue cycle management had been double-digit No. 1 priorities for the past four years of Jefferies surveys but are forecast to retreat to 4 percent and 8 percent, respectively, in 2019. By contrast, population health management/care coordination and resource management are quickly rising in importance.
SPENDING PRIORITIES
Jefferies report provides glimpse into hospital execs’ plans
Health technology equipment and services vendors might have a hard time upselling a good number of their customers and prospects in the coming year and change. A recent survey of hospital executives involved in IT buying decisions by locally based Jefferies analysts Sean Dodge and David Windley showed that more than 40 percent plan to hold steady or cut their spending in 2019.
4%
Drop at least 10% Drop 6-10%
Here are the top priorities for 2019 and how they scored this year and last. Revenue cycle
EHR/Meaningful Use
Analytics/BI
Resource management
Other
2017
0% 10%
Drop 1-5%
28%
stay about same
40%
Rise 1-5% 16%
Rise 6-10% Rise at least 10%
Population health
2018
2%
Dodge and Windley write that leaders of mid-sized hospitals are more ambitious than their peers, with two-thirds expecting to grow their spending next year and only 6 percent planning to cut back.
As for vendor opportunities to grow the overall pie of hospitals’ outside spending, supply chain and pharmacy appear to present the most opportunities. Nearly one in five execs surveyed said they’re considering outsourcing those functions in the next two years.
Now oUTSoURcINg
coNSIdERINg oUTSoURcINg
supply chain
8%
18%
specialty pharmacy
24%
18%
Revenue cycle
14%
14%
clinical services
42%
12%
It
14%
10%
Lab services
14%
8%
FUNTIoN
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‘FOSTERING A SOCIETY OF SMART PEOPLE’
An excerpt from the recently finalized Connected Nashville report
Former Mayor Megan Barry in the spring of 2016 convened a working group to outline and coordinate Nashville’s efforts to better integrate technology with the city’s infrastructure as well as other parts of government and public life. The group’s work led to the delivery to Mayor David Briley in late April of a final community report called “Connected Nashville: A Vision for a Smarter City.” Here is an excerpt from the report’s section on smart people. urturing a smart and connected community is not just about applied technology. It’s about using technology to make that 21st century education is inclusive, available to people at every stage of life, and centered on skills that are applicable to today’s tech-driven job market. It’s about embracing differences and learning from them. Fostering a society of smart people is about preparing Nashvillians to connect with a fast-paced global community in ways that are creative, meaningful and successful.
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Strategy 9: Reduce the Social Isolation of Learning Communities
Nashville can enhance individual empowerment, social inclusion, economic development, cultural prosperity and sustainable development by building what UNESCO terms a “learning city.” A learning city mobilizes its resources in all sector to promote inclusive learning at all levels, revitalizes learning in families and communities, facilitates learning for and in the workplace, extends the use of modern learning technologies, enhances quality in learning and fosters a culture of lifelong learning. Metro has worked to connect K-12 learning environments, as demonstrated by the many local partnerships with Metro Nashville Public Schools. A learning city also requires the unification of institutions providing education beyond K-12 into postsecondary, community college, university and technical training environments, and organizations operating in various sectors to reach people at all stages of life.
Strategic actions: • Align businesses, nonprofits, colleges, civic leaders, parents, faith communities, community organizations, and resources to reduce the social isolation of Nashville learning communities to support Nashville’s educational, digital equity, and career-oriented objectives. This will positively affect the talent pipeline and the success of our community as a whole. • Host and encourage citywide and global learning opportunities that bring diverse communities together. • Work within the community to develop and provide an online portal that aligns businesses, nonprofits, colleges, civic leaders, parents, faith communities, and community organizations to support learning.
Strategy 10: Develop STEM, Computational Thinking, Problem Solving Skills
In March of 2017, Forbes magazine published an
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article titled “The Cities Creating The Most Tech Jobs 2017.” Nashville ranked number 7 out of the 16 featured cities with a whopping 75 percent growth in tech-sector jobs within a 10-year period, from 2006 to 2016. The boom in techrelated jobs requires a re-engineering of how Metro educates K-12 students in school and out of school, especially as it related to empowering female students and students from underrepresented communities (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, immigrant/refugee communities, and differently abled) to pursue tech careers. Strategic actions: • Train both teachers and education-based nonprofit instructors in computational thinking and design thinking. • Given Metro Nashville Public Schools’ focus on illiteracy, align literacy students with computer science standards to help teachers align both mandates. • Align assessments of STEM with literacy standards to help inform instruction and alignment of district priorities. • Map all existing in-school and out-of-school STEM, media, arts, humanities and computational thinking trainings, and opportunities for youth in Davidson County to identify location, cost, timeframe, gaps and scale. • Build on Opportunity Now and Metro Nashville Public Schools data to track students’ STEMrelated trajectories. • Develop free summer opportunities for students K-12 to enroll in STEM, media, arts, humanities and computational thinking programs, with special emphasis on creating and scaling programming for elementary students in order to ensure that older siblings can also enroll in tech-related summer experiences. • Create intentional tech programs that empower students from underrepresented communities and diverse language communities. Collaborate with local colleges and universities that have National Science Foundation Broadening Participation grants and TRiO (federal outreach and student services) grants to help fund tech inclusion programs for underrepresented communities. • Increase transportation options (e.g. Strive, mobile units, etc.) for students to attend STEM, media, arts, humanities and computational thinking programs throughout the week. • Develop opportunities for community access to data science and visualization training using Metro Government’s own data in seeking answers to questions within Nashville’s neighborhoods.
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Strategy 11: Develop an Adaptabe Workforce to Meet the Changing Needs of Business
The rapid development of technology has transformed the world of business The Nashville Technology Council estimates that as of 2016, 1,600 tech jobs go unfilled annually in Middle Tennessee. Innovative and thoughtful action is required to develop the educational pathways and pipelines for the jobs of the future in Nashville. To help with this strategy, Gov. Bill Haslam has put forth an ambitious goal of having 55 percent of Tennessee residents earn a post-secondary credential by the year 2025. Metro Nashville can assist in this effort by scaling current practices and building new pipelines of workers. Strategic actions: • Provide opportunities for students of all ages to increase their practical and soft skills through experiences, access to tools, and support in career growth. • Increase access to the breadth and depth of postsecondary information and the support to make that information actionable. • Develop a cross-city university/college/trade consortium to work together to align post-secondary options and opportunities for students and nontraditional students, especially those from underrepresented communities in postsecondary programs. • Develop cultural, civic, and commercial innovation centers around Nashville to promote commerce and engage learners of all ages in building products and solving city issues.
Strategy 12: Digital Literacy and Innovation Capacity
According to the Metro Nashville Public Schools’ BrightBytes survey produced in 2016, 16 percent of students are without a home computer, laptop or tablet while 10 percent are without home internet connectivity. The 2015 Metro Social Services Community Needs Evaluation estimated that 75,720 people in Davidson County did not have internet access. These Nashvillians, regardless of socioeconomic status, physical disability, language, race, gender or any other characteristics that have been linked with unequal treatment, need assistance to enter the digital age. This is further complicated by digital readiness, a person’s likelihood to succeed or struggle when they use technology to navigate their environment, solve problems and make decisions, and by the digital divide, which greatly affects underrepresented communities.
Strategic actions: • Encourage collaboration throughout Nashville by connecting existing organizations serving the community to strengthen technology adoption and digital empowerment. • Create solutions that will be sought and shared to enable people with disabilities, seniors and those who need some form of accommodation to more easily use a computer and access the internet. • Work with community partners to create and execute an asset and deficit mapping process of digital inclusion in the city. This may take the form of a survey, as is performed every three years in Austin, Texas. • Develop a committee composed of Metro Nashville Public Schools tech leaders to help align in-school and out-of-school tech trainings and opportunities for MNPS students and families. • Create enhanced digital literacy programs that go beyond the basics to develop and support program that enrich users’ experiences and enable people to move from novice to expert users, and for some to become digital innovators or professionals. Some cities are developing innovation hubs and citizen user testing groups to build solutions to social problems in the city. • Create and develop programs providing access to affordable, available and sufficient devices and technical support. This includes partnering with local businesses on wifi access for learning, seeking mobile hotspot programs and/ or affordable LTE, increasing assistive tech (to help those with different abilities) at community sites, and increasing support for device ownership programs. • Develop trainings on Metro Government’s web portals to empower Nashville residents with information about their communities. Opportunities exist around open data and legislation, among other topics. • Create resources to be integrated into all programs to enoucrage people to use the internet responsibly while protecting their digital privacy and security. Parents and other caregivers will be provided training and resources so that they can actively guide their children’s online activities and protect their children’s digital safety. For more information, go to www.nashville.gov/ Government/Connected-Nashville.aspx.
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