Category Archives: Uncategorized

Why Cults of Personality Don’t Work (3+397 Reasons)

Cults of personality are REALLY REALLY popular.

By The People’s Republic of China Printing Office – Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (“The Little Red Book”), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13298051

But cults of personality are REALLY REALLY bad for business. I’ll give you three reasons why…and then I’ll give you a few more.

Three reasons why cults of personality kill business

Let’s look at some cults of personality to see the damage they can do.

Reason one: cults of personality don’t last forever

If I mention Sam Winston to you, most of you won’t know who I’m talking about. But he used to be very big in the world of tires, primarily because he was featured in every Winston Tire commercial that aired in California.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2BGNwhzuDk

Until he wasn’t.

Now there were some valid reasons for featuring Sam Winston in the Winston Tire commercials. He not only provided a personal touch, but he inspired a sense of trust by claiming that Winston Tire customers would benefit from the quality of his products.

Sadly, Sam Winston died in 1995 (ironically as the result of an automobile crash), and unlike a certain chicken purveyor, Winston Tires chose not to create an animated (or live action) version of its pitchman.

Without its well-known pitchman, and with other troubles, Winston Tire was sold in 1997 and passed through multiple owners before being liquidated entirely by Goodyear.

And now you DON’T get Sam.

Reason two: cults of personality obscure the bad news

There are many who worship Steve Jobs. Members of this cult preach the gospel that Jobs was unfairly kicked out of his own company until returning in triumph a decade later.

I’m not buying it.

By Photo: Bernard Gotfryd – Edited from tif by Cart – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID gtfy.01855.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110582355

Even before the board showdown between Jobs and John Sculley, Steve was not infallible. Insisting on building Apple’s own disk drive for the Macintosh, only the disobedience of his lieutenants (who secretly met with Sony) ensured that 1984 wasn’t delayed to 1985.

But 1985 was the year that Jobs either fired or resigned, launching the era of Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio. Was that decade truly a failure? Ask another man with his own cult, Woz:

“The Macintosh failed, really hard,” he said to The Verge in 2013, “and who built the Macintosh into a success later on? It wasn’t Steve, he was gone. It was other people like John Sculley who worked and worked to build a Macintosh market when the Apple II went away.”

“You know, I loved the Newton. That thing changed my life,” added Wozniak. “John Sculley got demeaned by Steve a lot, but he did the Knowledge Navigator, the Newton, HyperCard — unbelievable things.”

From https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/15/looking-back-at-john-sculleys-rise-as-apples-ceo-and-fall-an-october-15-1993

Admittedly there were issues during the tenures of all three post-Jobs leaders, but the company that Jobs ran in the 1990s was in a much better position than the one he left in the 1980s. In particular, the company’s revenue was five times greater in 1995 ($11.06 billion) than it was in 1985 ($1.918 billion).

And what about what Jobs did himself during that decade? NeXT took three years to even show its product, and in 1989 Businessland sold a whopping 360 units. NeXT sold 50,000 units, but then got out of the hardware business entirely and concentrating on its operating system, which it eventually sold to Apple along with itself and its head.

Of course, we all know what happened after Jobs returned. From that $11 billion, the company’s revenue…nosedived? Heading below $6 billion by 1998, revenue wouldn’t exceed $11 billion until 2005. By the time Jobs died, Apple’s revenue exceeded $100 billion. After his death, it has zoomed to over $300 billion.

Clearly Jobs had visions and successes, but Apple has also excelled without him.

Reason three: the end of the cult can compound the bad news

I’ve already talked about how Sam Winston’s death was the last straw for Winston Tire as an independent company.

But today, literally today (Monday, November 20, 2023), we are all talking about another Sam. Sam Altman.

By TechCrunch – TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019 – Day 2, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=127902290

As I write this the story is still evolving, but this much has happened within the last few days.

  • On Friday, Sam Altman was fired from the company he co-founded, OpenAI.
  • This was a reportedly a surprise to most OpenAI employees (with the exception of the person tapped to be interim CEO after Altman left) and to OpenAI’s major investor, Microsoft.
  • This prompted the exodus of several other people from OpenAI. This was similar but not similar to the people who left Apple for NeXT, except that in the Apple case Jobs controlled the timing of the departures, while in the OpenAI case it happened suddenly, within hours.
  • Apparently over the weekend there were second thoughts about letting Altman leave OpenAI, but the board that just got rid of him wasn’t about to roll over and let him dictate the terms of his return.
  • When we woke up Monday morning, we learned that Altman, Greg Brockman (who quit OpenAI after being fired from the board but asked to stay as an employee), and several other ex-OpenAI employees were now joining…Microsoft.

So, where does this leave OpenAI, now that its public face has been replaced by an ex-Twitch person?

Will ChatGPT remain synonymous with generative AI in the minds of many?

Or will OpenAI fade into the background?

The other 397 reasons why cults of personality kill business

But those aren’t the largest reasons why cults of personality are deadly.

The big problem is that whenever you talk about Sam, or Steve, or Sam, you’re NOT talking about things that matter to your prospects or customers.

  • Maybe your prospects want to hear about how tires keep (most of) you safe. They don’t care about a singing Sam.
  • Maybe your prospects want to hear about how that weird computer and that fancy laser printer bring customers into your prospects’ stores. They don’t care about Turtleneck Guy.
  • Maybe your prospects want to hear about how artificial intelligence, when used properly, can benefit your business. They don’t care about corporate soap operas.

So maybe THAT is what you should be telling your prospects…not about your cool founder.

Why did I write this post?

I was inspired to write this post after two things that happened to me on Saturday night. These don’t rise to the level of Sam, Steve, or Sam, but they got me thinking.

Bredemarket has an Instagram account, and before Saturday the account was frequently mentioning the (then) upcoming “art walk” festivities throughout downtown Ontario, California. You can see the highlights here.

Untitled Gallery, SW Holt Blvd, Ontario, California, November 18, 2023.

While I was wandering around downtown Ontario, two people approached me and said that they recognized me, and Bredemarket. Why? Because of their awareness of the things that I have been posting on Instagram.

But awareness doesn’t benefit anybody in the long term.

How can local businesses (or other businesses) benefit from what Bredemarket does?

Drive content results with Bredemarket Inland Empire Services.

The “400” refers to the 400 to 600 words that we will create together via the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service. Let’s get started.

Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service (June 2022)Download

So why don’t you get YOUR message out? Not about your founder, but about your prospects’ needs.

If You’re Not Saying Things, Then You’re Not Selling

Some of you are arriving here after reading about the AI CEO Mika.

Some of you aren’t.

But all of you (well, unless you’re Mika, who might not get out all that much) are familiar with how an outdoor marketplace works.

A marketplace contains two types of people—sellers, and those who aren’t sellers.

Designed by Freepik.

There are many different ways to tell the sellers from the non-sellers, but one key way (at least as far as I’m concerned) is that sellers are saying things.

If you’re not saying things, then you’re not a seller.

And you’re not selling.

If you want to sell, maybe you should say stuff.

Whether you are an identity/biometric firm, a technology firm, or a firm located in California’s Inland Empire, Bredemarket can help you create the blog posts, case studies, white papers, and other content your firm needs.

Click on one of the images below to start to create content that converts prospects for your product/service and drives content results.

Clean Data is the New Oxygen, and Dirty Data is the New Carbon Monoxide

I have three questions for you, but don’t sweat; I’m giving you the answers.

  1. How long can you survive without pizza? Years (although your existence will be hellish).
  2. OK, how long can you survive without water? From 3 days to 7 days.
  3. OK, how long can you survive without oxygen? Only 10 minutes.

This post asks how long a 21st century firm can survive without data, and what can happen if the data is “dirty.”

How does Mika survive?

Have you heard of Mika? Here’s her LinkedIn profile.

From Mika’s LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mika-ai-ceo/

Yes, you already know that I don’t like LinkedIn profiles that don’t belong to real people. But this one is a bit different.

Mika is the Chief Executive Officer of Dictador, a Polish-Colombian spirits firm, and is responsible for “data insight, strategic provocation and DAO community liaison.” Regarding data insight, Mika described her approach in an interview with Inside Edition:

My decision making process relies on extensive data analysis and aligning with the company’s strategic objectives. It’s devoid of personal bias ensuring unbiased and strategic choices that prioritize the organization’s best interests.

From the transcript to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQEyQ2-awc
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQEyQ2-awc

Mika was brought to my attention by accomplished product marketer/artist Danuta (Dana) Deborgoska. (She’s appeared in the Bredemarket blog before, though not by name.) Dana is also Polish (but not Colombian) and clearly takes pride in the artificial intelligence accomplishments of this Polish-headquartered company. You can read her LinkedIn post to see her thoughts, one of which was as follows:

Data is the new oxygen, and we all know that we need clean data to innovate and sustain business models.

From Dana Debogorska’s LinkedIn post.

Dana succinctly made two points:

  1. Data is the new oxygen.
  2. We need clean data.

Point one: data is the new oxygen

There’s a reference to oxygen again, but it’s certainly appropriate. Just as people cannot survive without oxygen, Generative AI cannot survive without data.

But the need for data predates AI models. From 2017:

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said India is poised to grow…but to make that happen the country’s telecoms and IT industry would need to play a foundational role and create the necessary digital infrastructure.

Calling data the “oxygen” of the digital economy, Ambani said the telecom industry had the urgent task of empowering 1.3 billion Indians with the tools needed to flourish in the digital marketplace.

From India Times.

And we can go back centuries in history and find examples when a lack of data led to catastrophe. Like the time in 1776 when the Hessians didn’t know that George Washington and his troops had crossed the Delaware.

Public domain. From https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11417

Point two: we need clean data

Of course, the presence or absence of data alone is not enough. As Debogorska notes, we don’t just need any data; we need CLEAN data, without error and without bias. Dirty data is like carbon monoxide, and as you know carbon monoxide is harmful…well, most of the time.

That’s been the challenge not only with artificial intelligence, but with ALL aspects of data gathering.

The all-male board of directors of a fertilizer company in 1960. Fair use. From the New York Times.

In all of these cases, someone (Amazon, Enron’s shareholders, or NIST) asked questions about the cleanliness of the data, and then set out to answer those questions.

  • In the case of Amazon’s recruitment tool and the company Enron, the answers caused Amazon to abandon the tool and Enron to abandon its existence.
  • Despite the entreaties of so-called privacy advocates (who prefer the privacy nightmare of physical driver’s licenses to the privacy-preserving features of mobile driver’s licenses), we have not abandoned facial recognition, but we’re definitely monitoring it in a statistical (not an anecdotal) sense.

The cleanliness of the data will continue to be the challenge as we apply artificial intelligence to new applications.

Clean room of a semiconductor manufacturing facility. Uploaded by Duk 08:45, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) – http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ictd/content/labmicrofab.html (original) and https://images.nasa.gov/details/GRC-1998-C-01261 (high resolution), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60825

Point three: if you’re not saying things, then you’re not selling

(Yes, this is the surprise point.)

Dictador is talking about Mika.

Are you talking about your product, or are you keeping mum about it?

I have more to…um…say about this. Follow this link.

Does Your Identity/Biometric Research Project Need Excel…or Bredemarket?

Does your identity/biometric firm require research?

Introduction

When talking about marketing tools, two words that don’t seem to go together are “marketing” and “Excel” (the Microsoft spreadsheet product). Because I’m in marketing, I encounter images like this all the time.

From Daniel Murray, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daniel-murray-marketing_you-never-realize-how-much-math-marketing-activity-7071849222035177472-Pp_-/

Daniel Murrary (of Marketing Millennials fame), who used the image above in a LinkedIn post, noted that the statement is incorrect.

You never realize how much math marketing has, but excel is an underrated marketing skill.

From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daniel-murray-marketing_you-never-realize-how-much-math-marketing-activity-7071849222035177472-Pp_-/

It’s true that marketing analytics requires a ton of Excel work. I’m not going to talk about marketing analytics here, but if you have an interest in using Excel for marketing analytics, you may want to investigate HubSpot Academy’s free Excel crash course.

From HubSpot, https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/excel-training-crash-course

But even if you DON’T pursue the analytic route, Excel can be an excellent ORGANIZATIONAL tool. As you read the description below, ask yourself whether my Bredemarket consultancy can perform similar organization for YOU.

Excel as an organizational tool

As I write this, Bredemarket is neck-deep in a research project for a client. A SECRET research project.

By Unnamed photographer for Office of War Information. – U.S. Office of War Information photo, via Library of Congress website [1], converted from TIFF to .jpg and border cropped before upload to Wikimedia Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8989847

While I won’t reveal the name of the client or the specifics about the research project, I can say that the project requires me to track the following information:

  • Organization name.
  • Organization type (based upon fairly common classifications).
  • Organization geographic location.
  • Vendor providing services to the organization.
  • Information about the contract between the vendor and the organization.
  • A multitude of information sources about the organization, the vendor, and the relationship between the two.

To attack the data capture for this project, I did what I’ve done for a number of similar projects for Bredemarket, Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, et al.

I threw all the data into a worksheet in an Excel workbook.

By Microsoft Corporation – Screenshot created and uploaded by Paowee., https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58004382

I can then sort and filter it to my heart’s content. Ror example, if I want to just view the rows for which I have contract information, I can just look at that.

Bredemarket as an identity/biometric research service

And sometimes I get even fancier.

From Spreadsheet Web, “How to combine data from multiple sheets.” https://www.spreadsheetweb.com/how-to-combine-data-from-multiple-sheets/

For one organization I created a number of different worksheets within a single workbook, in which the worksheet data all fed into a summary worksheet. This allowed my clients to view data either at the detailed level or at the summary level.

From Microsoft, “Report a Table Like Excel Pivot Table,” https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Desktop/Report-a-Table-like-Excel-Pivot-Table/m-p/565724

For another organization I collected the data from an external source, opened it in Excel, performed some massaging, and then pivoted the data into a new view so that it could then be exported out of Excel and into a super-secret document that I cannot discuss here.

Now none of this (well, except maybe for the pivot) is fancy stuff, and most of it (except for the formulas linking the summary and detailed worksheets) is all that hard to do. But it turns out that Excel is an excellent tool to deal with this data in certain cases.

Which brings me to YOUR research needs.

After all, Bredemarket doesn’t just write stuff.

Sometimes it researches stuff, especially in the core area of biometrics and identity.

After all, I offer 29 years of experience in this area, and I draw on that experience to get answers to your questions.

Unlike the better-bounded projects that require only a single blog post or a single white paper, I quote research projects at an hourly rate or on retainer (where I’m embedded with you).

By Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2407244

So if you have a research project that you haven’t been able to get going, contact Bredemarket to get it unstuck and to move forward.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Time for the FIRST Iteration of Your Firm’s UK Online Safety Act Story

By Adrian Pingstone – Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112727

A couple of weeks ago, I asked this question:

Is your firm affected by the UK Online Safety Act, and the future implementation of the Act by Ofcom?

From https://bredemarket.com/2023/10/30/uk-online-safety-act-story/

Why did I mention the “future implementation” of the UK Online Safety Act? Because the passage of the UK Online Safety Act is just the FIRST step in a long process. Ofcom still has to figure out how to implement the Act.

Ofcom started to work on this on November 9, but it’s going to take many months to finalize—I mean finalise things. This is the UK Online Safety Act, after all.

This is the first of four major consultations that Ofcom, as regulator of the new Online Safety Act, will publish as part of our work to establish the new regulations over the next 18 months.

It focuses on our proposals for how internet services that enable the sharing of user-generated content (‘user-to-user services’) and search services should approach their new duties relating to illegal content.

From https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/protecting-people-from-illegal-content-online

On November 9 Ofcom published a slew of summary and detailed documents. Here’s a brief excerpt from the overview.

Mae’r ddogfen hon yn rhoi crynodeb lefel uchel o bob pennod o’n hymgynghoriad ar niwed anghyfreithlon i helpu rhanddeiliaid i ddarllen a defnyddio ein dogfen ymgynghori. Mae manylion llawn ein cynigion a’r sail resymegol sylfaenol, yn ogystal â chwestiynau ymgynghori manwl, wedi’u nodi yn y ddogfen lawn. Dyma’r cyntaf o nifer o ymgyngoriadau y byddwn yn eu cyhoeddi o dan y Ddeddf Diogelwch Ar-lein. Mae ein strategaeth a’n map rheoleiddio llawn ar gael ar ein gwefan.

From https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/271416/CYM-illegal-harms-consultation-chapter-summaries.pdf

Oops, I seem to have quoted from the Welsh version. Maybe you’ll have better luck reading the English version.

This document sets out a high-level summary of each chapter of our illegal harms consultation to help stakeholders navigate and engage with our consultation document. The full detail of our proposals and the underlying rationale, as well as detailed consultation questions, are set out in the full document. This is the first of several consultations we will be publishing under the Online Safety Act. Our full regulatory roadmap and strategy is available on our website.

From https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/270948/illegal-harms-consultation-chapter-summaries.pdf

If you want to peruse everything, go to https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/protecting-people-from-illegal-content-online.

From https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/protecting-people-from-illegal-content-online

And if you need help telling your firm’s UK Online Safety Act story, Bredemarket can help. (Unless the final content needs to be in Welsh.) Click below!

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

When I Had To Describe This Technology, Words Failed Me

(TL;DR people can click here.)

What is this technology?

Last Saturday I hoped to gain inspiration so that I could shoot a video or capture an image to promote Bredemarket’s technology writing services—namely, writing blog posts, case studies, white papers, or other content to empower technology firms.

By mid-morning, with no inspiration, I captured a technology image of…something.

Chaffey High School, Ontario, California, November 11, 2023.

As I confessed in my “behind the scenes” video that day, I have no idea what this thing is, or whether this is used for water, gas, or something else entirely.

Chaffey High School, Ontario, California, November 11, 2023.

Why I did not know

And do you want to know WHY I couldn’t describe what I saw?

Because I failed to get a collaborator to work with me.

If an appropriate person from Chaffey High School presented themselves to me, they could have described:

  • Why this technology was necessary.
  • How the technology worked.
  • What the technology was.

You’ll notice that I asked the “why” question BEFORE I asked the “how” and “what” questions. Because “why” is most important. If a student or staff member sees this thing on the Chaffey campus, they naturally want to know why it’s there. They don’t really care if it pumps 100 liters of whatever per second.

How I can produce the right words for your technology firm

And that’s how I will work with YOUR technology firm when Bredemarket creates content. We work TOGETHER to create the content you need.

Do you need to create content that converts prospects for your technology product/service and drives content results?

Learn more by clicking on the image.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.

P.S. Don’t wait. There’s a cost to waiting.

Boots on the Ground, NOW

How many of you have used the phrase “boots on the ground“?

By Tony Lama – http://www.totalposters.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=135504474

In the “war” against competitors, your company needs “boots on the ground”…especially for on-premise deployments.

I’ve known a couple of companies that didn’t realize that they lacked boots on the ground…and that they had no plan to get the boots on the ground that they definitely needed.

This doesn’t just affect a company’s products. It also affects a company’s content.

Company X brainstorms

Company X was a new software solutions provider that had an internal brainstorming channel, and one person made the following suggestion:

Why stop at providing software solutions to our customers? Why not provide complete solutions with both software and hardware?

Now you NEVER want to totally shoot down a brainstorming idea, but it’s appropriate to consider the positives and negatives of any brainstorm. I won’t delve into ALL the negatives of shifting from a software solution to a software/hardware solution (profit margins, delivery times, etc.), but I will focus on one:

If you deploy integrated software and hardware solutions, you are responsible for MAINTAINING them.

What does this mean?

  • This means that you have to hire employees with hardware maintenance expertise, or you have to hire managers who can oversee subcontractors with hardware maintenance expertise.
  • For certain products (such as those Company X sold), customers demand fast response times. Maybe a 2-hour response. Maybe a 5-minute response.
  • Customers won’t wait a week for a maintenance technician to show up at their site. Broken hardware grinds business to a halt, and customer’s won’t tolerate that.
  • And they DEFINITELY won’t send the hardware off to a distant facility for repair.

As a pure software firm, Company X had few if any people qualified to perform the necessary maintenance activities.

But at least Company X had SOME people to consider these issues. Company Y wasn’t so fortunate.

Company Y sells

Company Y was also a software solutions provider. Company Y wanted to break into a particular industry in a particular country. I won’t reveal the industry, but I will reveal the target country: the United States.

Company Y developed and delivered a sales pitch that talked about the importance of the industry in question, and how the company could deliver a solution for that industry in the U.S.

But it glossed over one thing: Company Y had very few people in the U.S. at the time. Oh, they were working on hiring some more people in the United States, but at the time they didn’t have many.

And it was painfully obvious that Company Y’s U.S. presence was lacking. While talking about the expectations of different generations of people in the industry, the company rep referred to “Generation Zed.” For anyone listening to the sales pitch, that sent up an immediate red flag.

From https://makeameme.org/meme/you-aint-from-473654aef5

Now I’ll be the first to admit that American English may not be considered the most advanced English in the world. After all, we spell many words with an abundance of z’s…whoops, I mean an abundance of zeds.

From https://jakubmarian.com/is-american-english-simplified-and-british-english-traditional/

If you’re going to do business in the United States, you have to speak our language. And we Americans will be criticised (with an s) when we don’t speak another country’s language.

So when do you buy boots?

If you need boots on the ground to fight your competitors, you have to…well, you have to obtain boots on the ground. But when?

  1. One option is to wait until you need them, and THEN buy the boots. Wait until someone actually buys your software/hardware solution, or wait until you actually have a U.S. contract in your industry. No need to spend money on resources if you never use them, and if you do need the resources later, they’ll be able to ramp up quickly…right?
  2. The other option is to take the risk and put the boots in your closet NOW, so that when a customer calls upon you to deliver, you don’t embarrass yourself. This financially costs your company, but you’ll be primed and prepared to move forward when the business does come.

So let’s talk about your content

You don’t only need boots on the ground to deploy your products. You need boots on the ground to create the content that will entice prospects to BUY those same products.

You’ve been meaning to create that content for a while, but just haven’t gotten around to it. After all, there’s a financial cost in hiring an employee or a contractor (like Bredemarket) to create the content, and there’s an opportunity cost in taking one of your existing employees and tasking them with content creation.

So you haven’t created the content you need for your business.

And you’re probably not going to create it next week either.

Or next month.

Or next year.

Unless you move forward NOW and bring in some boots on the ground, namely Bredemarket, to work with you and create the content you desperately need.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.

Are you ready to move forward, or are you going to stay in place?

Or retreat?

Pangiam May Be Acquired Next Year

Things change. Pangiam, a company that didn’t even exist a few years ago, and that started off by acquiring a one-off project from a local government agency, is now itself a friendly acquisition target (pending stockholder and regulatory approvals).

From MWAA to Pangiam

Back when I worked for IDEMIA and helped to market its border control solutions, one of our competitors for airport business was an airport itself—specifically, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Rather than buying a biometric exit solution from someone else, the MWAA developed its own, called veriScan.

2021 image from the former airportveriscan website.

After I left IDEMIA, the MWAA decided that it didn’t want to be in the software business any more, and sold veriScan to a new company, Pangiam. I posted about this decision and the new company in this blog.

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Pangiam, a technology-based security and travel services provider, announced today that it has acquired veriScan, an integrated biometric facial recognition system for airports and airlines, from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (“Airports Authority”). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

From PR Newswire.

But Pangiam was just getting started.

Trueface, FRTE, stadiums, and artificial intelligence

Results for the NIST FRTE 1:N pangiam-000 algorithm, captured November 6, 2023 from NIST.

A few months later Pangiam acquired Trueface and therefore earned a spot on the NIST FRTE 1:N (formerly FRVT 1:N) rankings and an interest in the stadium/venue identity verification/authentication market.

By Chris6d – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101751795

Meanwhile Pangiam continued to build up its airport business and also improved its core facial recognition technology.

After that I personally concentrated on other markets, and therefore missed the announcements of Pangiam Bridge (introducing artificial intelligence into Pangiam’s border crossing offering) and Project DARTMOUTH (devoted to using artificial intelligence and pattern analysis to airline baggage, cargo, and shipments).

So what will Pangiam work on next? Where will it expand? What will it acquire?

Nothing.

Enter BigBear.ai

Pangiam itself is now an acquisition target.

COLUMBIA, MD.— November 6, 2023 — BigBear.ai (NYSE: BBAI), a leading provider of AI-enabled business intelligence solutions, today announced a definitive merger agreement to acquire Pangiam Intermediate Holdings, LLC (Pangiam), a leader in Vision AI for the global trade, travel, and digital identity industries, for approximately $70 million in an all-stock transaction. The combined company will create one of the industry’s most comprehensive Vision AI portfolios, combining Pangiam’s facial recognition and advanced biometrics with BigBear.ai’s computer vision capabilities, positioning the company as a foundational leader in one of the fastest growing categories for the application of AI. The proposed acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions, including approval by the holders of a majority of BigBear.ai’s outstanding common shares and receipt of regulatory approval.

From bigbear.ai.

Yet another example of how biometrics is now just a minor part of general artificial intelligence efforts. Identify a face or a grenade, it’s all the same.

Anyway, let’s check back in a few months. Because of the technology involved, this proposed acquisition will DEFINITELY merit government review.

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Kelly Shepherd, #fakefakefake

My belief that everything on the Internet is true has been irrevocably shattered, all because of what an entertainment executive ordered in his spare time. But the Casey Bloys / “Kelly Shepherd” story is just a tiny bit of what is going on with synthetic identities. And X isn’t the only platform plagued by them, as my LinkedIn experience attests.

By the way, this blog post contains pictures of a lot of people. Casey Bloys is real. Some of the others, not so much.

Blame COVID

Casey Bloys. Fair use. From https://wbd.com/leadership/casey-bloys/

Casey Bloys is the Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content. Bloys had to start a recent 2024 schedule presentation with an apology, according to Variety. After explaining how passionate he is about his programming, he went back in time a couple of years to a period that we all remember.

So when you think of that mindset, and then think of 2020 and 2021, I’m home, working from home and spending an unhealthy amount of scrolling through Twitter. And I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.

From Variety.

Casey Bloys’ very, very dumb idea

So why did Bloys have to apologize on Thursday? Because of an article that Rolling Stone published on Wednesday. The article led off with this juicy showbiz tidbit about Bloys’ idea for responding to a critic.

“Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that’s a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield,” he texted. “Do you have a secret handle? Couldn’t we say especially given that it’s D-Day to dismiss a soldier’s experience like that seems pretty disrespectful … this must be answered!”

From Rolling Stone.

(A note to my younger readers: Twitter used to be a popular social media service that no longer exists. It was replaced by X.)

Eventually Bloys found someone to create the “secret handle.” Sully Temori is now alleging wrongful termination by HBO (which is why we’re learning about these juicy tidbits, via court filings). But in 2021 he was an executive assistant who wanted to get ahead by pleasing his bosses.

This is where Kelly Shepherd enters the story.

Kelly Shepherd, fake vegan mom

From https://twitter.com/KellySh33889356

Ms. Shepherd seems like a nice woman. A mom, a Texan, a herbalist and aromatherapist, and a vegan. (The cows love that last part.)

Most critically, Shepherd is a normal person, not one of those Hollywood showbiz folks. Although Shepherd, who never posted anything on her own, seems to have a distinct motivation to respond to critics of HBO shows. Take her first reply to a critic from (checks notes) Rolling Stone. (Two years later, Rolling Stone would gleefully report on this story. Watch out who you anger.)

From https://twitter.com/KellySh33889356/status/1379101699969720323

alan is always predictably safe and scared in his opinions

From https://twitter.com/KellySh33889356/status/1379101699969720323

Kelly’s other three replies were along the same lines.

  • All were short one-sentence blurbs.
  • Most were completely in lower case, because that’s how regular non-Hollywood folk tweet.
  • All were critical of those who were critical of HBO, accusing them of “shitting on a show about women,” getting their “panties in a bunch,” and being “busy virtue signaling.”

Hey, if I couldn’t eat hamburgers and my home was filled with weird herbs and aromas, I’d be a little mad too.

And then, a little over a week later, it was over, and Kelly Shepherd never tweeted again. Although Temori apparently performed other activities against HBO critics via other methods. Well, until he was terminated.

Did Kelly Shepherd open a LinkedIn account?

But as part of the plan to satisfy Casey Bloys’ angry whims, Kelly Shepherd acquired a social media account, which she could use as a possible proof of identity.

Even though we now know she doesn’t exist.

But X isn’t the only platform plagued with synthetic identities, and some synthetic identities can do much more than anger an entertainment reviewer.

Many of us on LinkedIn are regularly receiving InMails and connection requests (in my case, from profiles with pictures of beautiful women) who say that we are constantly recommended by LinkedIn, who tell us how impressive our profiles are, and who want to contact us outside of the LinkedIn platform via text message or WhatsApp.

Now perhaps some of these messages are from real people, but I seriously doubt that so many of the employees at John Q Wine & Liquor Winery in New York happen to have the last name “Walter.” And the exact same job title.

Partial results from a LinkedIn search.

Let’s take a close look at what Karina has been doing for the last 4+ years. Other than posing in front of her car, of course.

From https://www.linkedin.com/in/karina-walter-853923245/
From https://www.linkedin.com/in/karina-walter-853923245/

Ms. Walter is a pretty busy freelance general manager / director / content partnerships manager.

As for her colleague Ms. Alice Walter, she has more experience (having started in 2018) but also has an extensive biography that begins:

The United States is a country with innovative challenges, and there is more room for development in the wine industry at John Q Wine & Liquor Winery. I am motivated and love to learn, and like to be exposed to more different cultures, and hope to develop more careers in my future life.

From https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-walter-b97bb2113/

Sound familiar?

And you can check out Maria Walter’s profile if you’re so inclined. Or at least check out “her” picture.

Now none of the Walters women tried to contact me, but another “employee” (or maybe it was a “freelancer,” I forget) of this company tried to do so, which led my curious nature to discover yet another hive of fake LinkedIn profiles.

Sadly, one person from this company is a second-degree connection, which means that one of my connections accepted “her” connection request.

Synthetic identities are harmless…right?

Who knows what Karina, Alice, and Maria will do with their LinkedIn profiles?

  • Will they connect with other professionals?
  • Will they ask said professionals to move the conversation to SMS or WhatsApp, for whatever reason?
  • Will they apply for new jobs, using their impressive work history? A 98.8% customer satisfaction rate while managing 1,800 sub-partnerships is remarkable.
  • Will they apply for bank accounts…or loans?

The fraud possibilities from fake LinkedIn accounts are endless, and could be very costly for any company who falls for a fake synthetic identity. In fact, FiVerity reports that “in 2020, an estimated $20 billion was lost to SIF” (synthetic identity fraud). Which means that LinkedIn account holders and Partnerships Managers Karina, Alice, and Maria Walter could make a LOT of money.

Now banks and other financial institutions have safeguards to verify financial identities of people who open accounts and apply for loans, because fraud reduction is critically important to financial institutions.

Social media companies? Identity is only “important” to them.

They don’t even care about uniqueness (as Worldcoin does), evidenced by the fact that I have more than two X accounts (but none in which I portray a female Texas mom and vegan).

So if someone comes up to you on X or LinkedIn, remember that all may not be as it seems.