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Inclusion, Covering Key Issues, Infographics and Ralph Waldo Emerson Make FleetOwner Special

by Media

This is the first article in an ongoing series on the 2022 Neal Award winners—what makes them special, what is replicable, and what lessons we can learn going forward. Endeavor Business Media’s FleetOwner engages us early with its design and tough stances, gives us easy-to-digest infographics and then pours it on with wonderful prose.

“Today, the words diversity and inclusion go hand in hand,” writes executive editor Cristina Commendatore in an article titled ‘Diversity in Trucking a Must’ in Endeavor Business Media’s 2022 Neal Award-winning issue of FleetOwner. (It won for Best Single Issue of a Tabloid/Newspaper/Magazine – brand revenue $3-7 million.) “Without an inclusive culture, it’s impossible to maintain diversity within any business operation. That’s particularly important for the trucking industry, which has a growing labor shortage and hasn’t traditionally been known as the most diverse industry.”

She points to Total Transportation in Jackson, Miss., which has a team that specializes in going to historically Black colleges and universities to promote the trucking industry. “The company also touts having nearly three times more female drivers than the national average.” “It’s easy to be diverse,” said CEO John Stomps. “Inclusion, however, is a culture; you’ve got to have that from the top down.”

That’s just one informative article in an issue chock full of them. Here are some of the things that the Endeavor Business Media staff got right in putting together this winning issue.

Address issues of the day. There’s an article how the vaccine mandate affects the industry, especially praising truckers. “When many in this nation sheltered in place, you maintained composure and answered the call,” said American Trucking Association CEO Chris Spear. He also praised the infrastructure bill that passed. “This bill is an investment in our economy, in our nation, and in our daily lives.” Other articles include: coverage of driver shortages; Volvo Trucks commitment to offer a fossil-free commercial truck lineup by 2040 and a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030; a focus on how data previews the tire market; the ecommerce market for truck parts; and an auction by a salesman for Inland Kenworth-Phoenix to benefit Truckers Against Trafficking.

The writing is first-rate. This is not your typical trucking lede—for an article titled The Long and Arduous Journey about the passing of the infrastructure bill: “The road trips we used to take as a kid, whether to Florida or Maine, were inevitably surrounded by great memories that lasted a lifetime,” writes David Heller. “In that regard, I must reference the adage by Ralph Waldo Emerson to describe the recollection of those long family jaunts: ‘Life is a journey, not a destination.’” An IdeaXchange expresses thoughts of many industries. “If we don’t start talking to young people about how important trucking is and the cool technology on trucks, we will have a hard time getting fresh faces behind the wheel.”

A great use of infographics. Trucking by the Numbers – A Supply Chain in Crisis, also by Commendatore, contains 12 pages of infographics, from Freight Forecast by Mode and Type to Substances Identified in Positive Drug Tests to Top Ten Truck Bottlenecks. A couple years ago, I recall Danica Stanciu, vice president for Politico, telling us: “We’ve invested quite a bit in infographics. The use cases for this are myriad. They can be used to help a sales team get up to speed [or] to [assist in] providing content and news to subscribers. Listen to your audience and understand what they need.”

Good use of the last page opinion article. “Last Word” may not be an original title, but Endeavor makes the best use of the space with an article titled “Everyday Heroes,” about proceeds from the sale of a specially built truck going to Truckers Against Trafficking. In 2017 they raised $83,000 and in 2019 $162,000. “Truckers are making a big difference in identifying a reporting possible cases of human trafficking to law enforcement.” “They are our eyes and ears out on the road and are relied upon to report suspicious activity,“ said Kendis Paris, executive director of TAT.

Clever touches. The message from the executive editor is called From My Lane. There’s an excellent top industry concerns column. The biggest 5 issues are: driver shortage, driver retention, driver compensation, lawsuit abuse reform, and truck parking. We can substitute any niche in the first three of those. An article on Yonkers, NY’s 1,400 municipal vehicles tells how they are maintained in a single shop with the latest technology.

Design matters. The red and black cover really shines, with its graphic use of numbers. And then they continue with that image in the contents and the feature article spread. The opening pages offer reports from their conference with an engaging top brick design tying it together. Also impressive is a full-page photo of the manufacturing of direct-fit diesel filters showing a woman doing the fiery work.

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SIIA Provides Input on Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) to Inform Pre-Rulemaking Session

by Policy

In a letter to Attorney General Weiser, SIIA highlighted the following points that we believe would make the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) stronger in its implementation:

  • Publicly available information. Many of our members depend on information in the public domain. The current version of the CPA does not appropriately address free speech concerns in its attempt to exempt publicly available information from the definition of personal data. We recommend a definition that adds widely available media – a defined phrase that clearly exempts the republication of information in databases of newspapers, and in unrestricted social media feeds – in addition to information released by the government, which is part of the existing statutory definition.
  • Amend the language to strengthen consumer rights and freedoms. Without this language, covered entities will lack the necessary flexibility to consider when the fulfillment of an individual request may infringe on the privacy of others, especially in circumstances when devices are shared by more than one individual. Other states like Virginia and California take an approach to remedy this problem.
  • Add accommodation for infeasible consumer requests. We recommend Colorado include additional guidelines in statute to denote action taken by data controllers, in the event of technically infeasible or unfounded consumer requests, in an effort to harmonize consumer requests with business compliance.
  • Clarify provisions categorized as “sensitive data”. We recommend clarifying the definition of sensitive data to ensure that consumers and businesses are aligned on the expectations for how sensitive data is treated.
    • First, the Colorado bill should include a clear and concise definition of biometric data. We recommend aligning with the definition of biometric data in Virginia’s privacy law to avoid confusion in practical application of the definition and help in the implementation of the Colorado bill, while avoiding costly implementation challenges.
    • Second, we recommend that the Colorado bill clarify that sensitive data includes data collected from a child, rather than more generally about a child. This change would help the bill to focus on the issue of concern without leading to implementation challenges ancillary to children’s data.

You can read more in the full letter.

Media Library (17)

Statement on: The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act

by PolicyPress Release

The following statement can be attributed to Jeff Joseph, President, Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA):

“The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act (CTDA) introduced yesterday by a bipartisan group of senators on the Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust aims to prohibit companies with more than $20 billion in digital ad revenue from running a ‘digital advertising exchange.’  This would force structural and behavioral changes on large and medium-sized companies in the digital advertising space and likely require companies like Google and Meta to sell off parts of their business.

“For companies with more than $5 billion in digital ad revenue, the bill imposes requirements related to greater transparency, an obligation to act in their customers best interests, and to undergo an annual compliance test.

“This bill continues a trend seen in other recently proposed legislation, where legislators seek to use the blunt instrument of antitrust law to punish a handful of large corporations, focusing only on a company’s size, not its conduct. If there are issues that need to be addressed, this is the wrong way to do it. Not only is competition in the digital ad space dynamic, but digital advertising is also what makes the free and open internet that we all enjoy possible. Forcing these changes would give consumers fewer choices that would be more costly.

“We encourage lawmakers to consider other options to resolve conflict of interest concerns such as establishing a code of conduct to mandate individually tailored behavioral changes coupled with auditability that would be implemented across the entire industry, not just to a small group of companies that are disfavored simply because of their size. Our nation has long believed in punishing companies for bad behavior, not for their success. That principle should continue to stand in the digital age.” 

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‘You Want to Leave Room for Magic’; How to Plan for Serendipitous Outcomes

by Media

“You want to leave room for magic.”

That line was uttered this week by independent filmmaker Drew Stone following a showing of his latest documentary, The Jews and the Blues, at a festival called JxJ here in Washington, D.C. The question was how scripted his 9-day trip to Israel was to film six famous blues players there—including Ethiopian-born Gili Yalo. (The two are pictured here.)

The “magic” he was referring to materialized in a couple places—on a visit to the Hebrew Music Museum where a woman working there showed him these incredible, old instruments; and dancing in a famous square in Jerusalem on the last night. He said his time was tightly scripted, but as a filmmaker, you have to leave a little time for some unscheduled things to happen. It’s a tough balance.

It reminded me of things we plan—our in-person events, our webinars, even our meetings. Are we allowing time and space for our “magic” to happen?

I say this because it’s one big reason that we should attend in-person events again when we feel comfortable—like our AMPLIFY conference, June 22-23 in Washington, D.C. (We have a universal track for B2B and niche publishers plus an association track.) Events produce the unknown—all mostly good. We meet people we wouldn’t meet otherwise, hear about ideas that are new to us, and put ourselves in an atmosphere where we can experience serendipity. (The word comes from a fairy tale and thus has always been thought as a “fortunate” thing.)

Knowing that I probably did not just invent this, I googled planned serendipity and sure enough, University College London (UCL) conducted a 2012 study “to design interactive systems that harness its power. By collecting and analyzing people’s ‘serendipity stories,’ researchers…hoped to design an interactive system that makes us more prepared for recognizing serendipity when it happens and, crucially, supports us in acting on it.”

Stories told to these researchers included:

  • A student being offered an internship at a journalism lab because someone from the lab noticed her enthusiastic journalism-related tweets;
  • An experimental chef getting the idea to create a sea-salt-cured mackerel dish when watching his daughter collect stones on the beach;
  • An architecture student watching a BBC documentary on honey bees and getting the idea of using the hexagonal shape of honeycomb to create a novel building design.

A researcher said: “By looking for patterns in people’s memorable examples of serendipity, we’ve found that it is more than just a ‘happy accident.’ It also involves insight—an ‘aha’ moment of realization.” There’s even a humorous video on the UCL site of the interviewer asking students, “What is serendipty?” “Is it Latin?” someone asks. They list three elements:

  • Unexpected circumstances;
  • Insightful “aha” moment;
  • Valuable outcome.

“The people we interviewed benefited from their serendipitous experiences, not only by enhancing their knowledge, but also by saving time—serendipity propelled the interviewees forward at a faster pace than they would have travelled otherwise,” said Stephann Makri. “Everybody can benefit from serendipity if they remain receptive to it and ready to act on it when it happens.”

Of course, we have to put ourselves in places to encounter it. Working from home now may eliminate some of those chances for serendipitous happenings in our lives. (Though it’s hard to beat working from my patio on this beautiful morning.) I used to have interesting discussions with a blind man I often encountered—by chance—on Metro each week, making his way to work like the rest of us. It’s easy to see why many bosses are pushing for some kind of hybrid work experience.

Will it happen at our AMPLIFY event or at the next Editorial Council online meeting or at the INFO Local dinners that we’re hoping to bring back? Hopefully, yes, if we plan it right. My colleague Jen Smith, who is doing a great job planning AMPLIFY, is scheduling plenty of time for those interactions with roundtables, no-speaker lunches (what a concept!) and time with the exhibitors. Personally, I can’t wait.

The UCL researchers were working on a mobile app aimed at creating opportunities for people to experience serendipity, but I can’t find any updates. They might have decided that an app might not be needed for this one.

PET

Event Recap: SIIA Presents at Privacy-enhancing Tech Summit on May 18

by PolicyTech&
Lisa Bader, Vice President of Communications for PET company Enveil (left), and Paul Lekas, SIIA Head of Policy, (right) engaged in a fireside chat on the regulatory landscape of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs).

 

 

On May 18, SIIA participated at the Privacy-enhancing Technology (PET) Summit, hosted by Kisaco Research. The summit included a range of public and private sector participants: governmental entities, private companies offering PETs, academics and PET researchers, and SIIA – one of the few trade associations who is actively advocating on expanding PETs. Private companies in attendance varied in size, scope and sector, demonstrating that PETs and privacy-preserving techniques, as well as AI and machine learning, are being used in a number of productive ways to expand the scale of usable data in the digital ecosystem. 

What are PETs? PETs are techniques grounded in advanced statistics and cryptography, that remove identifiable personal information from datasets so that they can be used both scalably and responsibly. By allowing the secure, real-time, and global sharing of data, PETs enable organizations to protect personal privacy while at the same time using data to make faster, better-informed decisions. Common examples of PETs include: homomorphic encryption, anonymisation, and differential privacy, which provides additional protection by never revealing personal data in plain text. 

PETs are being leveraged in various ways by the public and private sector. Just to share a few specific examples, the White House announced the use of PETs to improve supply-chain related challenges earlier this year and the U.S. Dept of Commerce published its 2022-23 priorities, including Strategic Goal #4, which is to expand opportunity and discovery through data. The private sector has been incorporating PETs into its strategy as well. Banks are using PETs to tackle money laundering and financial crime. In health care, PETs are advancing clinical trials that were once improbable and are being used to research and diagnose rare health diseases.

As was noted during the summit, due to a lack of general consensus and unified momentum, PETs continue to be underutilized as a solution to a myriad of privacy-related problems associated with data analysis and data transfers. 

Key takeaways from the session included:

  • Governmental entities, such as U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is conducting research and shaping guidelines for the use of PETs, as well as entities such as the UK ICO’s office, which is shaping guidance on PETs, discussed efforts underway in government and internationally to further fundamental research and applications of PETs, including pilot projects and the new U.S.-UK challenge..
  • SIIA’s head of policy, Paul Lekas, spoke in a keynote with leading PET company, Enveil. Lekas described the state of policy and regulation around PETs and opportunities for industry to educate lawmakers and policymakers. He shared the steps that can be taken to shape policy to encourage PET adoption. He explained how, as the phrase goes, a “rising tide will lift all boats”: companies in the PET space can work together to promote the use of these technologies for socially-beneficial purposes. He also spoke to the valuable impact that a trade association can play in bridging the gap between policymakers and private companies. SIIA is actively advocating to move the role of PETs forward and has been meeting with policymakers at every level of government to emphasize the socially beneficial uses of data and PETs in supporting stronger cross-governmental collaboration as well as U.S. competitiveness and innovation.  
  • Private companies and researchers presented examples of the unique use cases of PETs, including an emphasis in highly regulated markets that process sensitive data, like the financial services and healthcare sectors. But there are more use cases outside of these sectors, including in retail and cross-contextual advertising. Some machine learning and AI companies demonstrated in-house templates that are laying the groundwork to expand interoperable PETs usage beyond sector-specific uses. 
  • Venture capitalists commented on their vision and rationale for investing in PETs. There is optimism that PETs will be a fundamental driving force in the data economy. They noted the importance of further research on the ROI of PETs, in order to estimate the market need and drive further adoption and scale. 

Some brief takeaways from the event include:

  • The appropriate choice of PETs can differ considerably by use case, as demonstrated by evidence-based research.Therefore, no one PET is seen as paramount. While this means that the PETs community should be working to get the word out, the lack of standardization makes it difficult to unify the various approaches to PETs.
  • There is a need for further standardization and common definitions across the industry. Companies are using a range of AI and machine learning to build PETs into their infrastructure and no one PET has been evidenced to have more overarching potential than others.
  • Governments are in the very early stages of exploring how PETs can further the objectives of financial, health care, and other objectives. There is more that the U.S. government can do to model financial and regulatory incentives that are working in other countries, including the UK and Singapore, to expand mainstream PETs usage. 
  • More advocacy is needed. More can and should be done to unite the PETs companies in their shared goals to support a data-driven economy. SIIA is helping with advocacy and lobbying to take the heavy lifting off of small companies whose voice should be elevated with members of Congress and governmental stakeholders.
  • The future for the use of PETs is bright. Venture capitalists see tremendous potential for the industry, though they believe it remains in its infancy at the moment. It will require more alignment between private and public sector entities and will benefit from incentive-driven opportunities to encourage new market entrants.

Data use, capture, and processing is driving nearly every facet of our lives. By furthering a holistic strategy for PETs that incorporates all of the appropriate stakeholders in the data value chain, we can truly unlock its full potential.