S3 E6: Analytical challenges during Coronavirus

0:00Hello and welcome to Datum.

0:02Ravi, how are you doing?

0:04I'm good, thank you.

0:05Um it's a wonderful weekend to stay indoors.

0:08The sun is shining and the clouds there is not a cloud in sight, but of course we're staying indoors.

0:14Absolutely.

0:14The show must go on.

0:16Um this is episode uh six of season three.

0:19Uh we're continuing the theme uh

0:21of the moment, uh theme pretty much for everyone, which is coronavirus.

0:25So the last episode we talked a little bit about remote working.

0:29And this time around we're gonna bring it a little closer to home and we're going to be talking about the peripheral impacts

0:34of coronavirus and specifically the opportunities around analytics that's going to be presented to certain sectors.

0:41Um yeah for sure.

0:43It it is quite interesting with the um the the the out um the opportunity side of things, right?

0:48Because

0:49Opportunities maybe it sounds a bit opportunistic and like almost like disaster capitalism way, but what we're thinking of it is like a net positive.

0:57as as in how do we like improve and take move forward and learn from from the things we're we're getting through in this period, right?

1:04Exactly, exactly.

1:05It's it's it's almost the

1:07Uh it's the rare opportunity to look into certain ways of working and certain concepts

1:14uh in society that we anticipate to happen in the future, but because coronavirus um is is is a is a thing of the present, it's brought those forward.

1:23So we'll we'll go into this in more detail.

1:25But if you look at, for example

1:27online learning, um, you know, the economic impact of having a large percentage of your population uh on unemployment

1:35all of these um things of of things that you know economists and you know really novel thinkers have been thinking about for a long time but it's happening right now and so

1:45They need to be collecting data so they can better understand whether the theories that they developed uh and coming up with uh you know actually work in the in the real in the real world.

1:54Yeah, for sure.

1:55I mean I mean a hundred years ago the the the sort of big um exogenous shock we had was the first world war, right?

2:00Right.

2:01But that was the thing that was going on which was

2:03You know, i it was a time of innovation and change and like a lot of crap things happening.

2:07Yeah similar w we're in a similar situation where there there is a lot of crap things happening.

2:11Um but it's it's an op it's an opportunity to innovate and to move forward.

2:16And as you say, there's this the unique sort of uh take on this side of things is we we we have the to infrastructure and technological setup.

2:24to be collecting so much data to to sort of start to direct uh net positives in the right direction.

2:30Exactly, exactly.

2:31And just as a this is like a um foreshadowing a topic we're going to talk about later about climate

2:36Um climate scientists have actually um put together past events that uh have caused really big impact.

2:45um on on on sort of societies we live in.

2:47And just to give you some sort of idea on the sort of scale w of what coronavirus it looks like compared to some of these, I'll just give you the list uh as a very quick summary.

2:56Got the financial crisis of two thousand and eight and nine.

2:59This is by far the smallest impact uh uh to most things.

3:03You got a Spanish flu in nineteen eighteen, uh that slightly bigger than the financial uh crisis in relative terms.

3:10Then you've got the energy crisis of nineteen eighty to eighty-one.

3:14Um and then coming in uh you got the recession of nineteen ninety-one and nineteen ninety-two um as second on the list.

3:21And at the very top of the list

3:23It's a second world war.

3:24Nineteen forty four to forty five.

3:26I think France actually gone into recession because they've had

3:31um some of the worst economic performance since this era, 1944, 45, Second World War.

3:37And coronavirus as it currently stands, as we understand all the metrics, has almost double the impact

3:44of the fallout second world war if we just talk about climate.

3:48And so it's an astronomical uh sort of change.

3:52If you look at unemployment numbers coming out of the US, we've seen um you know unemployment levels

3:57that completely dwarf the 2008-9 cr financial crisis, which at the time felt like it was epic, right?

4:04Exactly.

4:05And and I think i it's it's it's crazy, right?

4:07It's absolutely crazy.

4:08So I guess this episode is gonna be slightly different.

4:10Like we're gonna

4:11I try and follow our unnormal format but it's mo gonna be more of a a discussion and um a bumper episode more than anything else.

4:18Exactly.

4:18Exactly

4:19So let's kick off.

4:20Let's let's start with the the the sort of economic impact as we've got a few high-level umbrella topics um that we've we've thought through.

4:27So the the the first one, I mean

4:29Yeah, I I'm linking economics and politics together.

4:31Like our world leaders, um, as much as we like to criticize them, they they've been under the kosh massively for the last uh last month or so, month well three months in some cases.

4:41Um so for example, the the UK cabinet had a meeting on Zoom um that they they they lauded and posted on Twitter.

4:48I think the funny part there was

4:50In the top left, you had the um the the meaty ID that they were using.

4:54So of course um Zoom hurriedly within 24 hours released an update which allowed you to get rid of that.

5:00Uh when you're taking a screenshot of your Zoom meeting.

5:02Right.

5:03Zoom Zoom bombing became a thing as well, where people were just guessing meeting codes, just typing in random numbers, and then just literally mobbing meetings.

5:12Exactly, exactly.

5:14Um But yeah, I mean the economic impact's been huge, right?

5:17So w we we we can start off with sort of unemployment and um uh people being furloughed in the UK.

5:22So furloughing is basically

5:24um indefinite leave so it's not um like using your holiday uh and you're not allowed to work for your employer uh but you're you're you're sort of placed on the it's kind of similar to gardening leave I guess

5:35But in the UK, following means that the government is paying 80% of your salary.

5:42And in some cases the the the firm that you're working for will top up to 20%, other cases they won't.

5:49So yeah, well what what are your what are your thoughts on this, Tim?

5:51I think yes the the impacts I felt in but basically every industry, right?

5:54Like even in even in uh data and tech as well as um

5:58So the the more obvious ones you can think of, which is like grocery and retail.

6:02Yeah, I mean this this coronavirus, it's a virus uh that I think is is is

6:08is symptomatic of the world we live in today, a globalized world.

6:12And uh we we we are focusing at the moment a lot on health because I think that that does come first, you know, the health of individuals, um making sure

6:22uh people's lives aren't put at risk um unnecessarily.

6:25But the the the net effect is that uh business and the world we live in is so heavily integrated into our everyday lives that when people can't go to work

6:35and can't produce or can't do something.

6:37It's gonna have a big impact on the economy.

6:40And if you just look at headline numbers, coronavirus is literally shaking up

6:45Absolutely every industry.

6:47If you weren't a stable business, if you didn't have a stable plan, if you hadn't just received investment

6:53This is literally rocking the foundation of of of everything you understand about your business.

6:59Not just this year, but it's going to be for the next decade.

7:02uh lending rates, all these things are gonna change.

7:05Yeah.

7:06If you look at simple headline numbers, you know, Fty one hundred down thirty percent um from January.

7:12I mean that's like just thirty percent of the w total value.

7:17uh of the entire top one hundred companies removed in three months.

7:21What's insane about that is um it's it's the the worst week of the FTSE was um

7:26Uh um uh uh worse than the dot com bubble, Black Monday and the financial crisis in two thousand nine.

7:31Like it's genuinely tanking.

7:34Like I think every single stock market is j genuinely tanking right now.

7:37Right.

7:38Because it

7:39Across the board, every company is bit feeling the effects.

7:41And uh, you know, we we talked about the unemployment rates of the US, but you know, that that's effect is seen in every other country, right?

7:48Right.

7:48Um, for example, the travel industry.

7:50um massively hit.

7:52Like there there's those um images of airports with just planes on the runway.

7:56And you just realize how many

7:58Planes are in circulation at any one time because so many of them are on the runway.

8:02And still if you use something like a flight radar, you can see you've still got the planes uh boo whizzing around the world like um cargo f for cargo reasons and things like that.

8:10Yeah

8:10So it it's fascinating in that sense as well.

8:13Um I think the the sort of other uh long term effect is um you you're seeing a lot more people

8:20not spending money because you know you you're indoors right you I mean I I talked a bit about uh you know I was spending money on other things like for example online gaming versus you know going going out for lunch.

8:31Yeah because you know now I'm but going to the grocery store and making my own lunch at home.

8:35It's it's different, right?

8:36Your money is spent elsewhere.

8:38And for those companies that are running just in time operations, um, you know, people like

8:44who will get their resources and their food and whatever on the week off and then cook it and then sort of run that quick operation, those are the people that are getting hurt the most because suddenly

8:55supply chains are being affected all across the board.

8:57Right.

8:57Right.

8:58And it's and this is the I think the thing people, you know, I'm just gonna take

9:03the iPhone as a very simple example here because it's a product everyone understands as we often do probably the best product ever made after Coca-Cola, right?

9:10Um sliced bread, slice bread.

9:13Okay, slice bread, whatever it is

9:15You take you take something as simple as your phone, the phone we all know and love.

9:19It takes Apple on a good, you know, economy's working fine.

9:24It takes Apple a week and a half.

9:26to get an iPhone from the factory line to someone's hand in the store.

9:31They do this on about 200 million units

9:35per quarter.

9:36Okay?

9:37So 200 million iPhones per quarter.

9:39And it's taken Apple almost two decades to build a supply chain

9:44That keeps that working.

9:46They have such good analytics and forecasting on predicted sales, on all these things, to be able to order in advance uh chips to have

9:56stockpiles of certain components ready to go so that it just takes them literally two days to make the phone and a week later it's in someone's hand using it like you know like a replaced iphone.

10:07That's completely gone to pot

10:09And not only has it gone to pot, you say, okay, if it's stopped for a week, well, wouldn't it just take a week to get back?

10:15Well actually no

10:17The issue with supply chains is they're so fragile.

10:21If you stop all supplying chains for one week, there's so many knock-on effects on things like just-in-time delivery

10:27Where parts are designed to arrive just at the point when they're needed to use.

10:32You've got warehouses now sitting full of stock

10:35which aren't able to accept more stock.

10:38So there are certain factories that can't start making more things until you know the suppliers or the p the companies who purchase this stuff actually pick it up.

10:46But those companies can't pick up that stuff if they're following employment, if they don't have people to work in their factories or, you know, non-socially distant sort of setups.

10:56So

10:57This is going to have a big impact on every single consumer goods product you can think of.

11:03The only thing that I think is getting away with it at the moment is food.

11:07But I think that's gonna come further down the line when you have the impact on farmers not being able to have as many workers um, you know, working, having a net

11:16negative effects on crop yield and so on and so forth.

11:19So this is like wave one, wave two will come when things that take six months to materialize.

11:24Harvesting, right.

11:25Harvest time.

11:26That's when it's gonna hit.

11:27Exactly.

11:27Um you know you got garden stores right now with with with with

11:31with plants just dying.

11:33Um you've got farms who, you know, create this stuff also just the crop going to waste.

11:39So

11:39This is gonna take years to come out of and you're really gonna discover what companies are made of.

11:44And uh you know, you can look at this almost as um call this the you know

11:48the Olympics of uh businesses where if you're not uh well set up, if you're not agile, if you've been putting off certain things, well now is the time you're gonna pay the price for that.

11:58Um

12:00I think you've seen a lot of companies start doing the um their digital hands transformation at this time, right?

12:08And and started seeing like, hey, we should really we really pay attention to this and this is a great time to it.

12:12So it's like no, the best time to it was was four years ago when you first had this idea.

12:16Exactly.

12:19Exactly.

12:20We'll talk a bit more about the social impact a bit later, but that that's that's that's really important.

12:25But um I I want to pivot this a slightly to a more positive and I think

12:29Uh what what I've been thinking about these positives uh since reading our sort of our notes is so many of these are first world problems.

12:37Like, oh man, this is

12:39This is gonna sound really uh what's the word?

12:41Uh entitled when we go through these because it's like, oh I wish you this was happening.

12:45Uh when of course there are there are parts of the world that are gonna be affected by this in in

12:50almost uh un unfathomable ways.

12:53Right.

12:53Uh but l let's get it let's get into it anyway.

12:55Uh so for example I I live near a um uh a Tesco uh so I'm trying to figure out when's the right time to go grow shopping.

13:03Now Google is great, right?

13:04So you can type in Tesco and show you like, oh, this is a this is a not so busy period.

13:08Yeah.

13:08But what what Google's showing you is a normal time at Tesco.

13:13So like a regular time, and that's the contextual data they have, right?

13:16Yeah.

13:17So that bar chart you see of not as busy is it's not as big busy given that they've got uh give it if this was a normal scenario where everyone's going to Tesco at any time of the day.

13:28But for a socially distant Tesco you will have to queue outside to get in and it's a one-in, one out system.

13:34Dear god, it is not at all.

13:37Quiet.

13:37Exactly.

13:38Quiet is busy

13:40Right, couldn't quite as busy and it's like and how how would you what how can you check that?

13:45So um I mean I I've tried a bunch of different things, like I've looked at

13:49Um uh Twitter, just before I go out, no one tweets about the Tesco near me.

13:54So that that that was a dud to begin with

13:57Uh I tried having a look at live traffic data through Google.

14:00Again, not not that accurate because I can like I can people aren't driving, they're gonna walk.

14:05Um

14:06Or take the bus and things like this, right?

14:08So it's it's just it's it's funny because Google of all the companies is the one I expect to be able to make this change.

14:15Because in exactly the same time frame, they've released something called the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports.

14:21But basically, what they're doing is they're taking uh um data from our phones, location data.

14:27And they're literally showing communities around the world whether people are complying to the social distancing rules or not.

14:33So if I if I uh let me let me share this with you now.

14:36Um I'll WhatsApp it to you and then you can have a look at um your um

14:43I'll just edit this so it's a bit more serious.

14:46Cool.

14:46Uh WhatsApp's it to you.

14:49I think it's actually funny if you watch this and then

14:52We we we come back to your complaint again because I think you'll be shocked.

14:55Why isn't this in the in the thing?

14:57Uh so if you go to United Kingdom, yeah, download the PDF.

15:01And then this is the thing I got Louisa to do.

15:03And then just search um I think Essex or Culture.

15:06Well yours would be Essex.

15:09Yeah, just search Essex, yeah.

15:10Yeah, yeah.

15:13So Ravi, what you're looking at now is that Google's obviously clearly got the ability to know the impact on

15:20The test.

15:21Absolutely.

15:22Like you're looking at charts right now that tell you that in Essex, as of the fifth of April, um when it comes to retail and recreation

15:30The baseline, they ac they have an un they have a concept of the baseline, and they have a concept of the fact that on the fifth of April it was down eighty-one percent.

15:39So

15:40You'd think that they could do something blanket across all locations just to say, well, listen, under social distancing circumstances, what would have been quiet should actually now be

15:52This busy.

15:52Yeah?

15:53Maybe they have, maybe they have, right?

15:54And I'm just looking at it and being skeptical because it's showing telling me that at um the time I went it was half as busy as it normally is, which I assume it was.

16:03Um but actually I'll get there and it's like a massive queue.

16:05I'm like, oh man.

16:07And and they have this globally.

16:08This is this is not I mean you've just downloaded the UK PDF, but you know

16:12Um uh one of our colleagues, um Louisa O'Brien, built a very, very quick PDF parser that was able to extract the data for all of you keywords.

16:21Um and

16:22I mean if you if you were to go if you were to go and do this for the whole data I'd really love a viz that showed you sort of all the different comparisons so

16:30If anyone's out there feeling enterprising, uh get in touch with with Louisa.

16:34Um but it's it's fascinating.

16:37These are the kind of opportunities that are sort of coming up and this data would never have been made publicly available.

16:42Had it not for the been for this situation.

16:45But it now makes you a little bit more aware of this is what Google can do with our data.

16:50Um obviously we've given consent.

16:52And they're sending it as PDFs rather than CSVs because they know what people will try and do.

16:56Um so they're just trying to make it a little bit more cumbersome if they can.

17:01But that's not gonna stop most people.

17:03Um but it's funny.

17:05Yeah, go on.

17:06It's funny.

17:14The there's a level of which the businesses that have to keep going, if you think of like food supply and so on and so forth

17:22They are also still gonna have impact.

17:24We've seen prices going up in the store, right?

17:26And the people having to increase s um the price of goods uh like Lou Roll.

17:31I have still have no idea why that was a big trend in the UK.

17:34It's now back to normal levels, which is great.

17:36Um but it's going to make sort of you know the technology giants just even more incumbent because they're the ones with pockets big enough to weather the storm.

17:48And then secondly, um, they're probably going to be the ones most ready to capitalize on this.

17:53If you look at Amazon, they must be rubbing their hands right now because AWS bills are gonna be going up this month because everyone's remote, right?

18:00Yeah, absolutely.

18:01I mean let's not let's not talk about the the the state their factory workers are in.

18:05That's a whole different discussion.

18:06That's a separate discussion.

18:08Yeah.

18:10So so let's move let's let's let's sort of um pause on pause on economics for there um and actually move on to education.

18:16Right.

18:16Uh I think every single uh institution has now gone online.

18:20They're using

18:21A c whatever combination of Google um what's the word?

18:24Google Hangout or Google Classroom versus Meet versus uh Zoom or GoToMeeting or whatever else.

18:32Brilliant.

18:33Is that right?

18:41In Charles for today, it'll be most like a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

18:43Hey Hugo, stop

18:48That was funny.

18:49So um uh Tim's probably gonna have edited that out, but we we've just had a chunk of where I was going off on about education and

18:56My Google home just was like, oh, you want to know about the weather in Champions?

18:59No, I don't.

19:01Yet another example of a service getting more data, because guess what?

19:04Everyone's at home.

19:05Everyone's home.

19:08Exactly

19:09Um so yeah, let's let's pivot to education.

19:13Right.

19:13Um uh you know, everyone's using a combination of Google Classroom, a Google Meet, or a GoToMeeting, all of these different

19:21ways of of of uh using online and I think a lot of graduations are now happening online as well because the US sort of school system finish finishing in the next couple of months.

19:29Yeah.

19:29So

19:30It's it's funny, uh, because you know I I I have a I have a history in higher education and not just I went to university, but I was an SU I was an SU president um for two years.

19:41And um

19:42There was a c there was a term called MOOCs, massive on open online courses, right?

19:47So this is like the coceros, the udemies of the world, right?

19:50Um and back then it was it was like a another revenue stream that universities looked at.

19:56They never really took it seriously.

19:57It was always like a third rate citizen to

20:01the experience that they were pitching of being at on campus.

20:05Um but and here's the big thing, the university spent twenty years kind of researching this stuff.

20:12And in the last month

20:13nearly every single university has had to go online only as their primary method.

20:20And not only that, it looks like they're gonna have to plan the summer term entirely online.

20:25So whereas, you know, people were kind of limbering, treating it as a second rate citizen, the Eudomedes and the Courseras of this world who actually pioneered the platforms and

20:34made made learning online are massively benefiting right now because they actually fully invested in this philosophy.

20:41Whereas universities that, you know

20:43um didn't are scrambling to buy Teams licenses, you know, uh Microsoft Teams licenses or Zoom licenses, left, right, and center.

20:52I I've I've uh I've I've been

20:54uh privy to a few calls where just just listening to people do soundchecks for the first five minutes.

21:01It's it's hilarious.

21:03Yeah.

21:04Yeah.

21:05I mean I i he his here's a remote working tip.

21:07I mean I know we we weren't we're not doing that, but um uh Ian Baldwin, my colleague, said that they what they're doing is spending time

21:13at the start of every call or webinar, going through how to use the tool every single time.

21:17Right.

21:17Yeah.

21:18Because it's so important, right?

21:19Because you know you're like, right, we're gonna run this this way.

21:21Here's how to do things, here's how we're gonna do it.

21:23Exactly.

21:24Yeah, exactly.

21:25And you have to do it, don't you?

21:27You you can't

21:28You have to bring people with you and this is something that universities are um are trying to do.

21:32But then there's a flip side, which is internet access isn't equal.

21:36There's an inequality in the quality equality of internet connections, right?

21:40So you have a concept where everyone's learning online, but in America there's a big uh discussion about the fact that

21:46Some kids don't have access to good enough internet to be able to do their homework online like they're being asked to do.

21:51So you have uh, you know, literal sort of economic inequality that's having an impact on the quality of internet speed

21:58Here in the Europe, it's not as big a of an issue because um compared to America, we have a much better sort of spread of internet and broadband across the whole country because of the way the infrastructures are set up.

22:08However

22:09We still have international students, for example, who are going back to their home countries because of the coronavirus and therefore being impacted.

22:16And in universities, international students

22:19Depending on the institution can account from roughly between ten to thirty percent of the students that are particularly.

22:25I think sixty or seventeen some of the London ones are.

22:27Right?

22:27Yeah, exactly.

22:28I'm just sort of generalizing universities here.

22:31But

22:31It can count for a large percentage and when a large percentage of your students can't take part in the course, it puts a real threat on the biggest uh sort of

22:39Uh revenue out of international students in the UK pay a lot more per student for their education compared to home students because of the way the funding works.

22:47Um

22:48American listeners probably will will will laugh at that because American education costs a lot more when it comes to higher education, right?

22:55But um, you know, that is again another very interesting thing where we want everyone to have access to education online and yet

23:03w the the the the plumbing that provides that isn't equal, isn't widespread, and it's in many cases not even good enough to have the quality of conversation you and I are having.

23:11I mean 100% first world problems.

23:14I'm s I'm watching a video of you which is crystal clear.

23:17You're listening to my audio again, crystal clear.

23:20I'm recording it all on a lovely laptop and it's syncing it to the cloud at the same time.

23:24I mean that is that is literally not a setup that even most

23:31students uh have, but yet it's the most ideal uh setup you need.

23:37You know, what we're doing for podcasting is exactly the interaction an academic needs in a seminar, exactly the interaction someone needs in a class.

23:45Well, right, and I think what was interesting is we we've had a discussion, Tanya, that the the the quality of your webcam and the quality of your audio and the stability of your internet connection is the new

23:57Dressing smart for work.

23:58Right, right.

23:59Right.

23:59It's like dressing smart for work is not as important as having good quality audio, good quality w um video.

24:06Right.

24:06And being

24:08Yeah, just being present in that sort of online digital way.

24:11Exactly.

24:11I think you mentioned Teams earlier.

24:14My favorite news story last week was uh Azure is full.

24:17Yes.

24:18Um Microsoft is your space

24:22The clo the cloud platform.

24:24Allegedly, uh this was not confirmed, of course.

24:26Why would they confirm it?

24:28Um confirmed by Microsoft, but allegedly they ran out of room.

24:31So that there was no more room in the cloud

24:34for for um for Azure.

24:36Now the the funny part of that is well, you know, th this brings home the fact that all the cloud is is someone else's computer.

24:42Right.

24:43So that that that was quite interesting.

24:45But I mean

24:47The thing the thing I'm finding is ev every every major corporation and company are are doing this thing where they're offering, you know, everyone's this is this is a nice inflection point.

24:56And we'll come back to this in in the social part, but um people who now unemployed or uh are currently furloughed or whatever else.

25:04Yeah.

25:05They're now in a point where they're thinking, hey, do I need to learn something new to be more employable?

25:09Right.

25:09And the answer is probably yes.

25:11They're probably going to choose the answer yes and try and find what they're supposed to be learning.

25:14So

25:15What's interesting is you're now getting people who may might be reticent to dig into a certain topic, then choosing to learn something brand new.

25:23So

25:24Um, so I think w so many companies have done this thing where they're like, hey, for the next 90 days or 30 days, have a free license on us or a free training material.

25:33Right.

25:33And man, like

25:34My favorite tweet, so I tweeted about Tableau's own like 90 days of free AE learning, great.

25:39My favorite quote tweet of that was a guy who was like

25:43I cannot wait to not finish any of the free training that I've just signed up for.

25:47And that's exactly what's gonna happen.

25:49It's like when there's a Udemy sale and I buy five courses for ten or pop.

25:53Old habits die hard, right?

25:54Like it's like, oh I I wanna do this, and then it's like you've got you've literally this this period of time, the other the other nice social part is this period of time is literally you've got so much time

26:04And to do stuff and know like you are in a period where we have to we are we are in control of our time and our sort of

26:13um leisure and it's like I'd love to do that if I had more time.

26:16It's like if you're gonna learn the guitar or learn anything new, this is the time you're gonna do it.

26:20If you're not gonna do it now.

26:21Likely likelihood is you're not gonna l do these these things, right?

26:25But and and and and there's uh there's also social social pressure on this, right?

26:29That's the flip side.

26:30Right.

26:31If you if you've got anxiety on on sort of like uh healthcare or social things, you're not gonna be like, oh I wanna I wanna go learn the flute.

26:38Like that is not the first thing on your mind

26:41It's very true and you know i i my issue with all of this is um and I have to be careful how I say this, but

26:51Um, God forbid, um, I get furloughed or something like that, or um I you know, I just can't go to work.

26:59I don't think the first thing I'd do would be to learn another software product or, you know, sign up for a Udemy course or something like that.

27:07And it's for a very simple reason.

27:09Um when something like this happened, it affects not just one person, it affects the whole household.

27:13Um for most people you are living in a household where you live whether whether you live with flatmates or your family

27:20or one other individual.

27:21All right.

27:22You you're kind of going through this as a household.

27:25The net effect is actually that in times like this, what you actually do more is spend more time sort of reflecting on yourself.

27:33Um, you know, one one area where I think we have seen success is journaling has gone through the roof.

27:39A lot of people because they're having more time to do mental reflection on on where they are in life.

27:44Um where their jobs are.

27:46So, you know, yes, people might decide at the end of that journey to pick up software, but if they were gonna do that, they were gonna do it anyway.

27:54Yeah, the the motivated people who who who know they want to do this are doing that anyway.

28:00It didn't take coronavirus to sort of bring that opportunity around.

28:04And so the opportunities people are gonna take are actually gonna be about self self-worth, self um, you know, value.

28:12Um a lot of mental sort of challenges.

28:14Fitness, for example, that's why fitness is taking off in a big way.

28:18People want to benefit themselves.

28:19They don't want to benefit

28:21Their employer if I'm brutally honest, right?

28:24If you didn't have to go to work, why would you pick up Tableau?

28:28Exactly right.

28:30I say that as someone who's passionate about Tableau.

28:32I'd pick up Tableau even if it wasn't my job.

28:35But brutally speaking, I know that many of the people we work with only use the tool they use because they have to, right?

28:42Correct.

28:42And they want to save time.

28:43It's not that they love the tool, they want to save time.

28:46That's why they use Tableau.

28:47But given the choice of not having to pick it up, why would they?

28:52Right, why would they, exactly?

28:53And I think, you know, companies like Headspace are doing some great things in this space, right?

28:56Like they're they're they're while they still have their s paid subscription offering, they have an entire track that's could um focused purely on um corona, right?

29:05Right.

29:05So uh living living in a time like this and sort of

29:08the things to consider around that time.

29:09And I think a lot of people now taking this opportunity to do that, right?

29:13And and sort of take care of themselves where they can.

29:16But I 100% agree with you.

29:17Like the the impact of this is not just for for the individual, but for the household.

29:21Right.

29:22So that that's that's quite I mean quite important.

29:25A better marketing angle would be if let's say Tableau said, Hey, um we're gonna we're gonna do some courses.

29:30Here's all the courses.

29:32But we're gonna do a special course where you and your family can get to grips with understanding the coronavirus through data, right?

29:39That I think is something you would do with your family, right?

29:42And that's that's sort of the marketing angle that's just missing from a lot of this, you know, just a little bit of context on what people are going through and seeing how you can help them understand the facts rather than becoming yet another thing someone needs to add on their to-do list.

29:56Yeah.

29:56I think what what's uh I I like the I like the point about the education piece because one of the things so I think that one of the key like heroes on on social media at least

30:05uh of this pr period is uh the financial times John Bern Murdoch, right?

30:09So uh John Bern Murdoch is is um in an in in the best possible way killing the game with really informative visuals.

30:16But I think the most important thing he's doing

30:19Is alongside everything that he's producing and sharing.

30:22And and this is this extends to the Financial Times data team as well, who are doing some incredible work and really um

30:28Really powerful in in the in in the way that they're that they're communicating this, but they're educating people on the long way.

30:34So for example, you know, um

30:36Uh John Erm made the conscious decision not to do per capita.

30:40He's made the conscious decision to look at the uh different ways of displaying the data.

30:44And and I think even this week he's pivoted to a seven day rolling average rather than raw new cases.

30:50Right.

30:50Right.

30:51And and I think what's really interesting is

30:53the this is a really good opportunity to increase that data literacy and viz literacy across the board as well.

30:58Right.

30:59And I think that's that's something that they they in particular are doing well.

31:01So shouts shouts to the boy John Bern Murdoch for for that sort of thing.

31:05Right.

31:06Okay, let's let's um let's take another tangent and pivot to healthcare, which which seems obvious, right?

31:11It's it's uh just last night I was I was out at eight o'clock clapping for the National Health Service

31:17Um by the way, you know the Americans think of NHS as something called socialized medicine.

31:22It's it's a political it's a politicized term in America because of the elections.

31:28Th the the term socialized medicine is being created to kind of create fear about the way we do things here in in in the UK.

31:36Um and 'cause, you know, uh the the healthcare systems in the two countries is very different.

31:40M mind you, we don't have the best healthcare system in terms of

31:43outcomes.

31:44I think Italy probably has one of the best and then Sweden as well.

31:47Um so the Scandinavian countries are quite high on that.

31:50But at a time where the healthcare system

31:52is essentially the front line of dealing with this virus.

31:57In in the first instance, you know, treating patients while we don't know have an answer.

32:02In the second instance, uh testing, in the third instance, helping find an answer, then in the fourth instance, helping deliver the answer, right?

32:11So it's like

32:12There's four pillars here.

32:13Oh god, I'm talking like Matt Hancock here.

32:15But there's four pillars.

32:19It's good, it's worked.

32:21Amazing.

32:22There's four pillars to this sort of whole whole strategy, right?

32:26And

32:26The healthcare system is going to play an important role every single time.

32:30And what has been really interesting is obviously

32:34Just uh just looking at the statistics, just the other day the National Statistics Office released updated figures on the debt toll.

32:41And as it transpired, um

32:43the way we collect data meant there was a misreporting of of d of of of death toll uh on caused by coronavirus because the numbers that we were getting up until a week ago only involved uh those who were admitted to hospital and then died in hospital.

32:58Yes.

32:59Um and as a result of that we weren't getting uh reported deaths um outside of hospital context, so those who've died in the community.

33:07So

33:07Well in the UK when you die in the community that essentially means you might have died in a care home or in a uh one of these sort of hospices that exist outside of the system.

33:16Those aren't actually recorded by the NHS because they're not supported

33:19Uh they're not part of the NHS typically, they're normally private or charity funded.

33:24And so just statistically, getting a very simple number out of the system has proved to have taken a month.

33:31because of the lag that requires to collect, analyze, check that data, and then report it as official statistics.

33:38And that's been a really interesting kind of challenge.

33:40I think on top of that, you've also got the fact that the the date the data that's being reported globally isn't the same.

33:47Right.

33:47So for example, that exists not just in the UK.

33:50But that exists in every other country.

33:53As well as on top of that, you've got the difference in the way that it's reported, right?

33:57Right.

33:57How how many of these people are directly coronavirus versus any other uh affli affiliated

34:03um disease, right?

34:04Right.

34:04All of these different things, like everyone has their different ways of defining that.

34:07And I think everyone uh I think there's a there's a few this this can be again uh turned into political football and sort of

34:15peddling the stats and snake oil, uh lies, damn lies and the statistics sort of thing, right?

34:20Yeah.

34:21But ultimately it it comes down to, you know, more some information is better than no information.

34:26Um and and this this is again like as we said before, this is a time where the data we're collecting is so important.

34:33Like there's an app that's gone around which is done by one of our customers, Geyson St.

34:37Thomas, uh, among other uh charities and institutions.

34:40where you can self-report.

34:42So there's an app that and again, this is spread through word of mouth, but it's not as widespread as it should be.

34:47And I don't think people are logging their status.

34:50per personally as much as they could be.

34:52Right.

34:52Right.

34:53So for example, like th the these could really help to add to the the models and start finding out.

34:58Now

34:59Alongside this, I the the other thing that I think, in my opinion, is being led bare is uh for for for the NHS in particular, is the technological lag versus the private sector.

35:11So for example, um

35:13The the the systems that they're using aren't perhaps the cutting edge systems they could be using.

35:17For example, you know, when when they're building models out and doing this data collection.

35:21There could be so many smarter ways of doing it, but given the underfunding nature of it and sort of the uh technology lag that they face because of security and all of these things they have to have in place, given the the sensitivity of the data they use

35:35And they're not able to, right?

35:36So for example, with um if you want to create a model, they could use software like Data Robots to do that, to deploy that and ingest it and they do it at scale.

35:46Yeah.

35:46But they can't, right?

35:47Because it's it's it's an expensive product and it's it's sort of aimed for big banks in the private sector.

35:53Exactly, exactly.

35:54I mean one of the most

35:57One debate that's really frustrating me actually is is testing because um journalists in the UK just uh literally driving me up the wall at the moment.

36:05Uh because, you know

36:06At a time where we need really good questions to be asked, they're asking some of the most inane questions I've ever come up with.

36:13Hundreds

36:14you know, journalists that I've respected are just coming out with really poor follow-up questions because they evidently don't understand how data works.

36:24And they don't understand more importantly the context behind every number.

36:27So testing has been a a big topic and I've been getting really frustrated

36:31um, you know, I'm getting visibly frustrated now be um because there's this constant reference to the German healthcare system and its ability to do so many tests and what every single journalist seems to just

36:45Ignore is the context, right?

36:47Why is it that Germany can do so many tests?

36:50Well, it turns out they're one of the few countries that was meticulously well prepared

36:55by coincidence to be able to handle the amount of tests they they run.

36:59Their healthcare system is set up completely differently.

37:02Each of the sixteen uh federal states

37:04makes their own uh decisions.

37:06So you get really good regional responses.

37:08Whereas here in the UK, it's been argued that social distancing is really unfair in quiet communities.

37:14where people's social distance anyway because this li the the the population numbers are so low, right?

37:20And so it's been uh unfair because you know of what it what it the positive impact on London

37:25has a negative impact on, I don't know, Fife in Scotland, if I take that as in a quiet town somewhere in in Scotland, right?

37:32The other thing is

37:33All of the testing capabilities.

37:35Coincidentally, Germany is a hub for this stuff.

37:38They've got so many companies, private companies, that are specialized in the testing equipment.

37:43And the chemicals required to do the testing.

37:46It's a bit like asking, well, why is your grass greener?

37:49Oh, it's just because I happen to have a plot of land on some really rich soil.

37:53That's basically what it equates to.

37:56Correct.

37:56No one no one is saying that in their questions.

37:58People just expect the UK to magically turn into this uh and and again, not not to get too political, but more one of my favorite sort of um uh comments from someone who who was in Germany was

38:09Uh in the German in the German system we don't clap for NHS.

38:19Fundamentally, that is exactly right, right?

38:21We we talked about this earlier on the pod, and it's sort of like

38:24Well yeah, yeah.

38:26You put your money where your mouth is, right?

38:28Let's stop cracking, let's start funding it.

38:30God And you know, we've got this concept of key workers now in the UK and it's like, well, yeah, we let let's actually start paying proper money, yeah.

38:38Paying people in the supply chain, paying people in the factories, paying people who are uh, you know, doing doing like post post postal workers, all of these people that are still going in and putting their lives at risk, right?

38:49Um by doing so.

38:51And it's more than just pay.

38:52It's it's uh something that that's come out uh from a lot of healthcare professionals is is that they they feel suddenly valued.

38:59Like they were never in it for the money.

39:00Um No, 100%

39:04The biggest benefit for most of the people who are working in in this healthcare system has actually been the fact that for once their their profession, their industry has been recognized by society as being vital

39:17you know, people going out the way to send them food and this is this is generosity they've never seen in their profession.

39:23But for many of them it's why they went into that profession.

39:26Because they wanted to be that kind of person in society and this is a job that allowed them to do that.

39:31Um and so there's also that context that, you know, I think people people aren't bringing into this.

39:36And again, I really hope that like like you eloquently sort of highlighted there

39:41that we stop clapping for the NHS when this is all over and we really start to take a long look at not just the NHS but all healthcare provision.

39:50And start funding it so we have the kind of system that we want next time this this this this kind of event comes around every 50 years apparently.

39:58Yeah.

39:59Yeah, exactly.

40:00And and and and it will, right.

40:01It will.

40:08I was sent a study from 2007 which talks about COVID-19.

40:12Like 2007.

40:14Um, but yeah, that that's that's let let's let's move on to to thinking about the data and analytics directly about about around healthcare.

40:21What what are your thoughts on sort of the opportunities and ideas that could come up from here?

40:25So um uh there's an interesting there's an interesting uh concept.

40:29I talked about four pillars, one of them being uh finding the cure and then delivering the cure

40:35The there's an interesting project called Folding at Home, which sounds like a really weird name.

40:40And basically what it is, it's a community sourced project

40:44where um you essentially lend your computing power to uh a project and that project basically uses the computational power

40:54um of your computer to process protein molecules and simulate them so that they can help find cures to diseases, right?

41:03And so one of the really important aspects of uh this whole coronavirus thing is that in order to find the solution, what scientists have to do is simulate

41:13protein chains um really really quickly and AI is actually the key way of doing this.

41:19So uh what literally happens is you take a

41:21protein molecule, you simulate its shape and then you interact with the thing you're trying to solve and you basically simulate using physics, just raw physics, you simulate how those two things interact, given a bunch of variables.

41:35And by simulating that, you can actually find much, much faster than doing the actual tests yourself, um, possible cures uh for coronavirus.

41:44So

41:44I've had this running on my computer actually.

41:46Every time I walk away from my computer, um it uses the graphics processor and the um six cores of my CPU.

41:53I have eight cores on there, so it uses six of the eight cores

41:57And I'm processing protein chains on behalf of this project.

42:01And this project went from having about thirty thousand

42:05uh people donating their computing power globally to about four hundred thousand um in the space of two weeks.

42:13And they've had really sort of funny challenges.

42:16Um because they had so many people join the project, um, they're actually working through a lot of the the the the um they're called work units.

42:24Work units are tasks essentially, much, much faster

42:27But also companies like uh Microsoft, Intel are starting to donate computing power to to this cause because they're realizing A, it's getting traction, but B

42:36It it's actually starting to solve problems and researchers can then use this data to quickly analyze stuff.

42:42So we're basically doing the legwork initially so that someone in can can come in and do the analysis.

42:47And it's literal literally uh sort of

42:50Things like this, which are happening at scale.

42:53These this is a community-run initiative.

42:55There are private initiatives as well, doing the same thing, benefiting off the same data.

43:00And technology is going to be the forefront of how we solve this.

43:03Whether it's, you know, China doing the way they track people, you know, that's been

43:17On the flip side of that

43:19Surveillance.

43:19That's that's always a topic that comes up.

43:21But won't go into it, but always a topic that comes up.

43:24There's other instances in China again where

43:27You know, they're using robots to do cleaning activities using ultraviolet light.

43:31The idea there being is that you don't have to put someone at risk in order to do that.

43:35So robots are being repurposed around the world.

43:38to basically go around hospitals using UV lights to clean and sterilize entire floors in a very quick and efficient way, in a way that a cleaner could never do, um just using sort of everyday sort of tools.

43:50And so we're seeing the emergence of technology being um maybe uh hastily adopted, but in many ways doing good, at least for now.

43:59And the the key question remains is you know, when this is all over.

44:03Will those initiatives still be there?

44:04Will surveillance still be there?

44:06And this always happens, right?

44:08In America you had the uh terrorism act brought in.

44:11uh after nine eleven, it's still there and it's still used today.

44:15They never took it away once it once they brought it in.

44:17So and same the same here in the UK.

44:19These initiatives once they're there

44:21Well, they become very difficult to remove because as a mechanism it's kind of convenient and you can use it again and again and again.

44:29Correct.

44:29Correct.

44:30I I think this this is a good time to pivot to social distancing and talk about the people impact of things right.

44:34Right.

44:35Um so social distancing is

44:38Is the concept of sort of staying two meters away from people when you're out and about and um not going literally just staying at home and only going out for for

44:47Um what's the word?

44:49Essential activities.

44:50Only going out for essential activities, exactly.

44:53And um trying to find ways for to police this, I guess, and also share that news, right?

44:59So I I I mean

45:01I don't own in television.

45:02Uh sorry, sorry.

45:03I own in television.

45:04I don't have I don't pay for the TV license.

45:06I use streaming services instead.

45:09So for me, how how am I getting the public news broadcast?

45:13Well, you know, I've got I've got social media.

45:15So I've got Twitter, I've got YouTube

45:17Beyond that, like if if if you know, we we we're sent into total lockdown and I've spent the entire three day period over Easter.

45:25Right.

45:26Playing playing games on my PlayStation, not checking social media, having a complete break from that.

45:30Right.

45:30I have no idea.

45:31Like there is nothing that tells me that apart from maybe I'll get a message or something like that.

45:36You not get the letter, Ravi.

45:37I've not got the letter actually.

45:39I got the letter.

45:39I I don't ha Okay, well I haven't got the letter.

45:43I've not had post for about a week now.

45:44Okay, look, I'll show you.

45:45Official Town Downs, Downing Street, letterhead.

45:48Signed by Boris.

45:50It arrived when he was admitted into intensive care, which made the the signature a little bit disingenuous, but

45:58I'm glad he's on the road to recovery uh um as it is um on a s on a more serious note.

46:03But um Yeah for sure

46:05You know, snail mail is basically what the government sent to m to update everyone, right?

46:10There's this wh why are we n why are we not all like for uh like why are we not all forced to have an app on our phone?

46:15Why are we not getting push notifications from a government app?

46:18Why are we not getting text messages?

46:19For the thing, I I think because people do.

46:22Do you remember when we had the discussions in the UK about uh digital identities, right?

46:27Yeah uh they had the I think this idea of a national identity card with with biometrics got got Canned because I think the company behind

46:37Building the system has actually been found to have had sort of really bad data breaches and and leaks, and so the whole thing got canned for a long period of time.

46:46Um if you look at the NHS, if you look at the NHS, they actually do have an app

46:50But you can sign up and look at your own medical records from your general practitioner there as well.

46:55The people people always have irrational fears about this.

46:58I say irrational because in a broad sense, um, there's other ways of getting the same data.

47:05But think, you know, once you have an app on your phone that's run by the government, it starts to get a little bit I mean, even I'd personally be a little bit uncomfortable.

47:14for example, the first time it acts it asked for my location, uh access to my location, right?

47:19Because it's there's just something different when it's the government tracking your location compared to a third party company

47:26You can go to stop paying for delete off your phone.

47:29Exactly.

47:30Um when it's a government, I think people rightly have a little bit more sort of suspicion of what happens with that data.

47:37That said

47:38in certain situations it's a useful mechanism for communicating with people and I think should be explored.

47:44It should be explored.

47:45There should be I th these press briefings again really

47:48uh irritate me.

47:49Um I kind of wish they didn't have journalists on this press briefing.

47:53Honestly.

47:53I know it's called a press briefing for a reason, but I wish it was actually called a national address and questions came through.

48:00I I yeah.

48:01I I f I feel like you're absolutely right.

48:03I think that the the reason that there's sort of uncertainty is the covenant isn't ever really held to account, well it hasn't been, at least for the last ten years.

48:10Right.

48:10By the by the by the media, right?

48:12So th if the media's not holding them to account

48:14Then well of course of course we've gone under good trust to media, right?

48:17Right.

48:18Because because now there's also media in the case of

48:22other so you can subscribe to the media that's sub it follows your views.

48:26So you you always feel gratified and correct.

48:28That's why people go to the Guardian versus the Daily Mail versus The Sun versus all of these, you know

48:33You go to the one that reinforces your beliefs and you go to the one where the writing style suits your suits your mindset and that's why they all exist happily in an ecosystem because there's enough variety there in what we all expect to read and want to see

48:47Um for sure.

48:48So so the things things that have changed with social distancing.

48:51I think as I mentioned earlier today, like shopping habits have changed

48:55Uh I think is what's really funny is I was speaking to a coup about a couple of friends who're like, man, so you w normally I'd buy my dinner on the way home.

49:01So what do you mean?

49:02It's like, well I'd stop at the Sainsbury's and pick up what I'm having for dinner that night.

49:04It's like

49:06So what are you doing now?

49:06He's like, Well I have to plan my meals.

49:08Yeah.

49:09So it's it it's it's true, it's it's true.

49:11You know, especially in L'Heaven.

49:14There's there's a whole change in everything.

49:15I mean I'm noticing it.

49:17I I'm spending on average two times what I normally spend when I go to Tesco for two reasons, because I'm buying for longer periods of time.

49:24I have to queue for twenty minutes to get in

49:26I don't want to go as often as I can.

49:29So I'm walking in and not only am I walking in, I'm not stockpiling anything, but I'm also thinking, ah yes.

49:36That would be nice to have in case.

49:38You know, this whole in-case methodology turns up whilst you're browsing the shelves, right?

49:43If it keeps for five months.

49:45I'll buy it just in case, you know, at some point in the next two months.

49:48I decide to bake cookies, which is something I apparently did today.

49:51I bought cookie cookie cookie uh chips because I thought I might make cookies in the next two weeks.

49:57Have no plan to

49:58Just I might I might do it.

50:01It's choice, right?

50:02You want the you want you want the the the choice uh to be available for you to do it, right?

50:06I think that's that it's that's the thing that people are finding hardest, I think.

50:09It's crazy.

50:11The fact that that choice is taken away from you, that you can't just go to the shop and be like, hey, I fancy jelly today.

50:15Yeah.

50:17And on the flip side, you know, we joke about sort of, you know, our choices and the choices we have.

50:22On the flip side, there are people in society, unfortunately, who don't have those choices, um things like food banks uh and so on and so forth, who are struggling to serve the amount of people, especially given the increase in unemployment and furlough

50:36are struggling to get the food to the people they need to um in this in this scenario.

50:40And I was I was saying to my brother, um he he he works um in the government civil service um scheme and I was talking to him about this concept of

50:48Um I think you touched on it earlier before we started of universal uh basic income, but also this idea of a communist sort of system, which is almost like

50:57You know, this is actually the perfect time to just say, whoa, everybody, just stop stockpiling stuff.

51:04Let's put a little bit of control on our resources here and give equal access to everyone.

51:09And the elderly

51:11Those who need it the most, let's just ensure everyone.

51:13A bit like in Liverpool where they've taken homeless people off the streets, no?

51:17So so what I like I mean the US based thinking of is exactly

51:21Right, right now would be the perfect time, right?

51:23People are furlough, but you want to give them disposable income so they can spend money to help other businesses keep going.

51:28Right.

51:28That is fundamentally what um US basic income is.

51:31So Andrew Yang in the US, um I followed his

51:35uh campaign quite closely because he sort of follows a lot of sort of the the tech focused views that I have um uh that for running and sort of modernizing the way the government's run.

51:45What was interesting is he was like, well

51:47You rebrand universal based income as the freedom dividend in the US and they love it.

51:53They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, hell yeah, pay me for being free.

51:56Um and it's exactly the same concept.

51:58And I think I think Universal Basic Income has has has had this unfortunate branding problem where it's been it's been sort of given this idea and

52:07is fundamentally uh everyone just sees it as communism and socialism.

52:11It's a mess.

52:12And when really when really it's su it could be such a big benefit, especially right now

52:17Yeah, it's I think it's innate to our human nature, right?

52:20No one wants to be seen to be given handouts, be ever you know, everyone wants to everyone wants to earn their place.

52:26Uh it's it's this sort of everyone wants to be a secret hero, everyone wants to just feel valued, and you know the the term universal basic income just sounds like a handout, right?

52:35And therefore people automatically

52:39Whilst whilst they're happy to benefit from it, feel a little bit uneasy.

52:43Because it it's just like, well, this is different.

52:45This isn't what I was taught all my life, you know.

52:48But but but but but fundamentally imagine imagine the society where you you we we're all getting what five thousand pounds extra a year which is universal basic income

52:58Now we're getting that and now we we we're in this situation.

53:02I want to give half of that to the NHS directly.

53:05And that is a mechanism you can do

53:06Like it's it's creating these tools and levers for people to actually be able to impact and and do that in in this time where where the some a lot of people fit do feel helpless, you know.

53:14They do they don't have that.

53:16ability to to make that small differences.

53:18Right.

53:18Like you and I have both read Nudge though and uh Yeah.

53:23Do you know how that that turns out.

53:25Nudge is a great book if anyone's not had a chance to read it.

53:28Um who's the author?

53:29Is it Daniel Kahneman?

53:30Or am I?

53:31No, it's um Cass and Sunstein.

53:33Yes, okay.

53:34Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

53:35Exactly.

53:36So I'm confusing books.

53:37Thinking Fast and Slow is the other one there.

53:39Yeah, Carnuman's that one, yeah.

53:40It's in Thaler and Sonsi is not Cass.

53:42Right, right.

53:43I'm getting my behavioral economists mixed up again.

53:47Oh man, they must be having a field day right now, right?

53:50This is literally behavioral economists.

53:53behavioral scientists for stock, never mind behavioral um economics um in itself.

54:00So yeah, it's funny how it's funny how this is gonna have such a big impact on society um and and how

54:07You know, I I I I love I love for the people who've been working at home all their lives, nothing has changed for them.

54:14And so So nothing's changed for you, Tim?

54:19Broadly speaking, I mean I'm quite used to this.

54:22I already had a good setup at home.

54:24Um

54:25What is what is what is difficult I think is people adapting to this world when they weren't set up for it, especially if you've got family at home.

54:32I mean, it's easy for me to work from home.

54:34I haven't I don't have a child.

54:36Um, I haven't uh, you know, uh

54:39I haven't had to s like overcome some of the challenges that people are having to overcome because I'm not at that same point in life.

54:46So whilst it's okay for me to say yes, I can work from home and I have been for a while and this I'm used to this

54:51Yes, but I don't have a family.

54:52I don't have all these other challenges that will transpire if you're living with more people.

54:56For sure, yeah, yeah.

54:57Um I think we do have to take a little bit of a longer look as well.

55:00Um looking back to last week, you know, companies will have to rethink

55:03how they manage that.

55:04And because going forward, people aren't just going to want to go back to work.

55:07People are going to want to work from home.

55:09They've proved they can work from home for three months and you've trusted them to do that.

55:13So it's no longer a question about trust and social norms.

55:16It's now simply a question of are your policies up to date or not?

55:21Yeah.

55:21Absolutely.

55:22I think I think the the thing you're you're seeing changes habits, right?

55:25So the the fact is

55:28Um people's habits are changing right now.

55:29I think we we've talked we've talked a bit about like the the Amazon like delivery service um before, like the fact that that's probably the most

55:38They're doing so well right now.

55:39Um but people are getting used to that on-demand um gr um shopping.

55:43Like I think we're gonna get so many more people doing online grocery shopping now.

55:47You're gonna get so many more people doing

55:49uh breaking those habits they used to have about you know going out for lunch and things like this that they wouldn't have done before.

55:55Yeah.

55:56So it's it's it's this is a great time to break those habits.

56:00So like those people that wouldn't be using

56:02uh hangouts or teams or all these other softwares.

56:04Yeah.

56:04You're breaking these habits and changing the way people think because no it's it's not no longer that

56:10um CAR model we talked about, which is um Q action response, right?

56:14Yeah.

56:15You're then having to break that cycle and you have to create new habits.

56:18Yeah, exactly.

56:19And it's it's funny because um we t Ocado is probably Ocado and all these online delivery systems.

56:26It's it's kinda funny because um

56:28Ocado is one of the few supermarkets that has an entirely automated warehouse.

56:34And by that I mean they don't have a single person that picks your shopping for you.

56:39It's all done through a robotic system.

56:42So the bottleneck for a company like Hicado hasn't been uh picking the food and getting it into the right baskets.

56:49It's been the number of drivers they have to actually deliver uh that stuff.

56:53And so, um, that's gonna be a really interesting dynamic because touching on that, the companies that are best suited to respond to this

57:01already semi automated.

57:02You know, Amazon has some semi automated warehouses.

57:06They can just keep stuff going without a single person.

57:09And even if they need people, they have very few, so social distancing works perfectly fine.

57:14Look at a data center.

57:15Literally the best place to work if you're socially distancing yourself.

57:18There's only about ten people in the single data center.

57:21No one else can go in.

57:23The place is so vast.

57:25That you could all work.

57:26And it's so clean.

57:27Yeah, it's so clean as well.

57:28They they they they're they're incredibly clean.

57:30That's where that's why Apple and all these companies are sourcing masks because inherently their production and data centers

57:36require this level of cleanliness that actually works for you know healthcare purposes.

57:40And so the companies that are responding to this in a strong way, unfortunately

57:46are the ones we should be looking at in the future because they're probably gonna make more people unemployed if they carry on with their with their sort of their automated approach.

57:56And so this concept of universal basic income

57:58Becomes even more prevalent because the companies that are keeping us up going now, Deliveroo, all these ones, the back-end systems don't require people in an office.

58:08They they're entirely remote.

58:11I mean the you're seeing this already.

58:12Like I I I was I was calling a government agency last weekend and then foolishly forgot that obviously no no one's gonna pick up the phone because they all work in call centers and

58:21Uh no one's going to a call center right now because it's probably not a great place to be.

58:26But now I was thinking, well, I'm one one of my banks that I have, they they sent me an email being like, no, our call centers are still running because ever every one of our workers is now working from home.

58:34And doing it that way.

58:35Yeah.

58:35Right.

58:36So you you're gonna find these two things, right?

58:39First of all, you're gonna get people who are doing their jobs then remotely, which is gonna create

58:44And enhance the gig economy in a massive way.

58:47I could be spending the morning answering phones and the afternoon doing babysitting.

58:51Right.

58:51Right.

58:51All of these different things, right?

58:52You're able to start combining.

58:54Probably.

58:54And the second thing is

58:56And then the second thing is you're gonna get chatbots and AI start to pick up things as well.

59:01So this is a huge in China, right?

59:03We chat is absolutely massive.

59:05It has integration for days.

59:07Like you from WeChat you can order food, tell them what you want, and then tell them where you live, and that's all done all automatically.

59:13Yeah.

59:13And I think that that's gonna people are gonna seriously start looking into those features.

59:17Yeah.

59:18Because as as we said, e-commerce is

59:20doing probably the best in this situation.

59:22Yeah.

59:23Um but even then.

59:25And even then.

59:27It's funny because um

59:29When we when we talk about WeChat in the Western world, people always I think we always think, oh, that's that's what they use in China, right?

59:36Like, um, and we don't ever have a concept of what kind of scale

59:41Does we WeChat have compared to all these other services?

59:45And it's actually quite big, um, given that it's predominantly used in one geography.

59:51Okay.

59:52It has close to a billion monthly users.

59:55Okay.

59:55And you might look at Facebook, well, Facebook has two billion.

59:59Um, you know, services like WhatsApp has one point two billion.

60:02So you think, oh what's um what's uh one billion compared to one point two billion?

60:07Well the difference is is what's up is global, whereas WeChat is just one country.

60:11So in the context of China, specifically where this is heavily used

60:15That's a phenomenal amount of penetration.

60:18That's that's that's higher levels of penetration than you'd ever think is normal in a single society.

60:25Um and if you look at WhatsApp um in the UK, for example, it doesn't have anywhere near the kind of penetration that we chat.

60:31Definitely not.

60:31Um in in WhatsApp in in in in in Africa and in in Asia for sure.

60:36has very strong.

60:36Massive.

60:37And I've and and this is why what's I've put in restrictions on the amount of forwarding you can do.

60:41Yeah.

60:41My message in uh Amer in America is pretty big.

60:44Yeah.

60:45Exactly.

60:46Every every single um

60:48country and localization has their own sort of mechanism that ever everyone use sort of uses it and it's fascinating to see.

60:54Um I think that the my my fate my I mean in India it's fascinating because everyone will have a mobile phone.

60:59No, everyone has a landline.

61:00Everyone has access to internet and data.

61:03Yeah.

61:03And then this becomes their primary source of work.

61:05Like I've I was I I was

61:08you know, book bookings and travel in when I was in Kenya and everything was done via via WhatsApp.

61:13It was fascinating.

61:14Yeah, yeah.

61:14You've got services like MPESA in Kenya, which is mobile payments.

61:17I mean, we laugh about mobile banking here in the UK, but honestly

61:22The UK or the Western world has nothing on what uh services like MPESA are doing in Africa.

61:27It's it's really revolutionalized mobile payments and they're just using simple things like text messages.

61:32It's not even like br you know breakneck technology um or contact list, none of that.

61:38It's it's really sort of groundbreaking use of very old systems that everyone can use to make payments.

61:44Um it's fascinating

61:46Right, we've got one more topic on the list, which is the climate.

61:49And I think this is probably a more good.

61:52Yeah, this is a feel-good one, right?

61:55And uh so coronavirus and the climate, what do you think?

61:58Ah, well what are the what are the connections?

62:00Well

62:00It's the positive impact actually of the fact that, you know, we're using transport eighty percent less.

62:06So things like CO two emissions, uh, the climate, the air

62:10the waterways, they're all becoming cleaner.

62:13And I I put this in here because, you know, I'll uh maybe first I'll touch on a few stories that we're seeing.

62:19Um there's a there's I'll put a link in the show notes to someone took a photo in Venice.

62:24of the waterways and they were shocked at A how clear the waterways actually are when there's no boats, um kind of making it dirty as it were.

62:34And then since that's happened, we've now had fish and dolphins returning back to the waterways in places where people have never seen dolphins before.

62:42Because these are just their natural habitats when

62:44um, you know, when the water's clean, when when when it's not sort of overpopulated by humans in essence in essence.

62:51Um in London and China we've seen

62:54air quality uh improve massively because again transport is down eighty percent and some of these are going to have long lasting um sort of impacts um at least um uh for this year

63:07I mean r relatives from of mine in India have sent me the well the same well similar pictures of uh from Punjab uh where you can see

63:15Um the Himalayas for the first time in hundreds of years.

63:18They said it for a hundred years, they've not seen it as clearly.

63:21Right.

63:21But no one has seen it it for ages and then everything's cleared up because

63:25People aren't going out, people are staying home.

63:27All of these different sort of mechanisms and people are social distancing.

63:31We're not flying as much, right?

63:32We're not we're not traveling as much.

63:33All of these are like petrol, all of these things that are dropping, dropping, and dropping, and

63:38Suddenly uh it it's it's it's it's healing and it's really really cool.

63:42I mean the thing I live next to our main road, so what's fascinating is in the last three days the amount of traffic going through has increased and I think it that is because of the lot extended needs to break

63:52But the last three weeks, oh man, like when you get to the evening, from about six o'clock onwards, nothing.

63:59Right.

63:59No one's out and about.

64:00It's like a Sunday afternoon.

64:01Right.

64:02Exactly, exactly.

64:03And it's it's it's a fascinating outcome of all of this.

64:07Um at the very beginning of the episode I I talked about um sort of

64:12uh different um impacts of the past.

64:15So I talked about financial crisis, Spanish flu, energy crisis.

64:19Just to give some context, um if we just take the Second World War

64:23Um the yearly change in global emissions uh during the Second World War, 1944 to 45, was uh roughly about eight hundred million tons, a decline in CO2 emissions.

64:36Um

64:37Now the coronavirus compared to that is going to be about one and a half thousand million tons.

64:44I think that's technically a billion.

64:46I don't know if I'm gonna do an American billion or a UK billion.

64:50Like right.

64:50It depends where you are.

64:52So I'll just say one and a half thousand million

64:55tons of CO two decline just in the period that we've been locked down for.

65:02Um and so

65:04What's interesting about climate is number one, if you're doing a survey right now about um populations of wildlife or certain species

65:12Well this has pretty much buggered up your results because you were expecting uh to be doing it in a circumstance where you know things weren't so good.

65:20But on the flip side, I'm really hoping that people are collecting data because this is a rare opportunity to know

65:26what actual impact we have on the world, right?

65:28You were never gonna be able to ask people to not go to work for a week to just measure what the the drop in CO2 levels is.

65:36But if you have all these testing initiatives out

65:39You've been able to see the gradual decline and then see how long it's taking wildlife to come back.

65:45Those measurements, those measurements are vital because for so long we have theories about

65:51What are the positive impacts of doing X versus Y and electric cars versus Y?

65:55But n we've never had the data to show

66:00The decline and then the impact and then the consequence.

66:04And here's an opportunity naturally given to us to do exactly that

66:09Exactly.

66:09And I think that it will help so much with the the the fight for the new Green Deal and all these different things that we're doing.

66:15Right.

66:15Around around um climate change and making sure that the global that global warming crisis is in sort of

66:20exerbated in the next fifty years, right?

66:23It's funny, like fifty years of time is either we're either gonna be hit by another kill of virus or the earth will be like burnt to a crisp or something similar, right?

66:30Right.

66:30Or like rising sea levels.

66:32And we're we're pretty lucky.

66:33I I I hate to use this word.

66:35I hate to use this word on the coronavirus, but it uh in terms of its mortality compared to viruses of the past.

66:42It's a fairly low, fairly low.

66:44I mean The technological advances of the today, right?

66:47Compare that to the to the Spanish flu.

66:50Yes, exactly.

66:51And um

66:53So in in in some respects we're lucky that this hasn't had as high mortality rate, but my God, is it a an awakening of what we need to do and

67:02We need to take more lessons than just the healthcare uh impacts, the economic impacts.

67:07We need to also look at the climate and say, well, listen, we did actually figure out how to work remotely for three months

67:15What if in order to save our climate?

67:17We didn't do necessarily that, but we started to implement rules and restrictions.

67:22Like a simple one I I I was talking to my brother.

67:25Hibernating would be one, but a simple one it'd be to ask all businesses um to have thirty percent of their workforce work remotely at any given time, right?

67:35And so that would naturally force

67:38reduce just reduce um the use of transport by 30%.

67:42Then on the flip side of that you'd reduce strain.

67:45You maybe wouldn't have to invest as much on transport because you'd reduce the strain of the system.

67:49And then you could invest that money into healthcare instead.

67:52I mean I'm just talking spitballing economics here.

67:55I'm just I'm doing linear correlations between stuff on the plan.

68:00Which is not how it works, I'm sure.

68:02But

68:03These are the kind of really sort of bold decisions.

68:06We now have an opportunity.

68:08These are the opportunities we now have to sort of take advantage of this and see see see where things go.

68:15Yeah, 100%.

68:16I I think I think again I think that's a great place to sort of finish.

68:19But uh I mean if we if we follow the what so what now what what I mean the

68:24But no one's like we don't know what's we have no idea.

68:26No idea.

68:27Who knows?

68:27Uh no one no one knows.

68:29And uh uh in some ways that's good because

68:33It it shows that as a you know as people we can react fairly quickly to these things and and come up with an answer.

68:39And I hope when we reflect was

68:41We'll we'll think we've done the right thing.

68:42Um there's also return on community spirit, and there's so many positives you can look at in this right.

68:48You've got you've got

68:49You know, people consider being so considerate of others, like I said, the key worker sort of championing and it's it's and the climate.

68:56There's so many positives coming out of this and it's just making sure that we maintain and sustain those.

69:02Exactly.

69:02Yeah.

69:03Moving forward.

69:05Alright.

69:06So so that was a bumper podcast from us, Tim.

69:09I think that was an hour-long special.

69:11Um just over.

69:13I think do do do do send do send us some um feedback and thoughts.

69:17Um

69:17any any positives that you've seen in your your industry in your world uh over the last month or two uh so that's at datumpod on twitter and our email Tim uh datumpodcast at gmail.

69:28com

69:29Fantastic.

69:30So everyone take care and uh we'll see you in a couple of weeks.

69:34Absolutely.

69:35Take it easy