Uncategorized – Page 179

The tone of voice to use when talking about forensic mistakes

Remember my post that discussed the tone of voice that a company chooses to use when talking about the benefits of the company and its offerings?

Or perhaps you saw the repurposed version of the post, a page section entitled “Don’t use that tone of voice with me!”

The tone of voice that a firm uses does not only extend to benefit statements, but to all communications from a company. Sometimes the tone of voice attracts potential clients. Sometimes it repels them.

For example, a book was published a couple of months ago. Check the tone of voice in these excerpts from the book advertisement.

“That’s not my fingerprint, your honor,” said the defendant, after FBI experts reported a “100-percent identification.” They were wrong. It is shocking how often they are. Autopsy of a Crime Lab is the first book to catalog the sources of error and the faulty science behind a range of well-known forensic evidence, from fingerprints and firearms to forensic algorithms. In this devastating forensic takedown, noted legal expert Brandon L. Garrett poses the questions that should be asked in courtrooms every day: Where are the studies that validate the basic premises of widely accepted techniques such as fingerprinting? How can experts testify with 100 percent certainty about a fingerprint, when there is no such thing as a 100 percent match? Where is the quality control in the laboratories and at the crime scenes? Should we so readily adopt powerful new technologies like facial recognition software and rapid DNA machines? And why have judges been so reluctant to consider the weaknesses of so many long-accepted methods?

Note that author Brandon Garrett is NOT making this stuff up. People in the identity industry are well aware of the Brandon Mayfield case and others that started a series of reforms beginning in 2009, including changes in courtroom testimony and increased testing of forensic techniques by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and others.

It’s obvious that I, with my biases resulting from over 25 years in the identity industry, am not going to enjoy phrases such as “devastating forensic takedown,” especially when I know that some sectors of the forensics profession have been working on correcting these mistakes for 12 years now, and have cooperated with the Innocence Project to rectify some of these mistakes.

So from my perspective, here are my two concerns about language that could be considered inflammatory:

Inflammatory language focusing on anecdotal incidents leads to improper conclusions. Yes, there are anecdotal instances in which fingerprint examiners made incorrect decisions. Yes, there are anecdotal instances in which police agencies did not use facial recognition computer results solely as investigative leads, resulting in false arrests. But anecdotal incidents are not in my view substantive enough to ban fingerprint recognition or facial recognition entirely, as some (not all) who read Garrett’s book are going to want to do (and have done, in certain jurisdictions).
Inflammatory language prompts inflammatory language from “the other side.” Some forensic practitioners and criminal justice stakeholders may not be pleased to learn that they’ve been targeted by a “devastating forensic takedown.” And sometimes the responses can get nasty: “enemies” of forensic techniques “love criminals.”

Of course, it may be near to impossible to have a reasoned discussion of forensic and police techniques these days. And I’ll confess that it’s hard to sell books by taking a nuanced tone in the book blurb. But if would be nice if we could all just get along.

P.S. Garrett was interviewed on TV in connection to the Derek Chauvin trial, and did not (IMHO) come off as a wild-eyed “defund the police” hack. His major point was that Chauvin’s actions were not made in a split second, but in a course of several minutes.

Case studies, revisited

A little over a month ago, I mentioned that Bredemarket was going to be getting some more case study work. And it has.

No, not that type of case! By Michael Kammerer (Rob Gyp) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37604962

(I’m gonna run my “case” study visual joke all the way into the lost baggage room.)

So how is my client USING these case studies that I am helping the client to create?

To win more business from law enforcement customers.

When my client’s law enforcement customers are pleased with the client’s offering, they’re willing to participate in case studies addressed to OTHER law enforcement customers.

Case studies are effective because they speak to the needs of the readers. The reader has a problem, and the case study tells how a similar entity solved that same problem. In this case, a law enforcement agency learns of a solution that has already worked for another law enforcement agency. “If it worked for my friends in the next county, it will work for me also.”

“Hey, mate, did you read the case study about that software package that Bruce’s agency uses?” By Love Makes A Way – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lovemakesaway/15802177909/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101171928

The power of case studies doesn’t just work for law enforcement. It can work in any industry where the customers band together to help each other out. E-commerce developers. Security experts. Mobile car washing services.

If you’re a company that provides identity solutions (or technology solutions, or other solutions), and you have customers who will rave about your product to other customers, then you’re a candidate to create a case study. If you want help, contact me.

(Past illustrations) Introducing products from the European market into the U.S. market

(This past illustration describes something that I performed in my career, either for a Bredemarket client, for an employer, or as a volunteer. The entity for which I performed the work, or proposed to perform the work, is not listed for confidentiality reasons.)

PROBLEM

There was a strong desire to introduce two products, popular in the European market, into the U.S. market. However, the products could not be introduced as-is without adaptation.

klompen from the Netherlands. By Berkh – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17202956

SOLUTION

For the first product, I participated as part of a team that not only identified the peculiarities of the U.S. market (which differed in significant ways from the European market), but also identified target customers (both core customers and growth customers) and estimated revenue for the first product. The initial revenue estimates were unrealistic and were revised.

Several months later, as we were preparing the introduce the product in the U.S. market, I created the sales playbook for the product. This included a product description, competitive products, and answers to frequently asked questions. This playbook was presented to account managers via a webinar upon completion.

For the second product, I again participated as part of a team that identified the peculiarities of the U.S. market. In this case, the U.S. market was VERY peculiar, and it was determined that it would be best to enter the market slowly, via strategic partners.

Some time later, we were asked again to enter the U.S. market. I provided the historical perspective from the earlier analysis, noting that the U.S. market was STILL very peculiar, and that no changes to the original strategy were warranted.

RESULTS

The first product has been successful in the U.S. market, has advanced through several generations, and continues to expand its functionality and its reach.

The second product has not yet been successful in the U.S., since the peculiar market conditions continue to exist.

The business TikTok post that I couldn’t share with you

I had a really good post planned for today.

While I’m not a big creator of video content, I can certainly appreciate good content, and I planned to share some excellent video content with you.

There is a mobile car washing service in my hometown of Ontario, California. Now videos of mobile car washing are more exciting than videos of…well, videos of writers writing, but not by much. So if you want to grab someone’s attention, you have to put entertaining content into a mobile car washing video.

(No, not that.)

So this local mobile car washing service posted a video on TikTok that began with the service washing…a kid-size vehicle.

Completely cute and entertaining, so I decided to share it from the TikTok app to one of my Facebook groups, and then decided that I wanted to write a blog post about it.

So I went to share the video from the TikTok web page to this blog, and was told the video was not available. I investigated further, and found this on the account page.

Yes, you read that right – a COMPANY’S TikTok account is PRIVATE.

I went back to my TikTok app, navigated to the account, and confirmed that the video was still there (for those of us who were logged in and following the account) and that hundreds of people have seen it.

But I can’t share it with you, nor can I share any of the company’s other videos, which are restricted to “Followers only.”

But trust me, it was a really cute video.

What is an “antimicrobial” contact fingerprint reader? And what is it NOT?

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

In the COVID and (soon) post-COVID area, people don’t want to touch things. That impacts how identity products are marketed, including biometric readers.

Why contactless biometrics are “better” than contact biometrics

In the biometric world, this reluctance to touch things has served to promote CONTACTLESS biometric technologies, such as facial recognition, other other technologies. The loser in this has been fingerprint-based technologies, as several facial and iris vendors have made the claim that face/iris biometrics are contactless, while fingerprint biometrics are NOT contactless.

Well, my friends at my former employer IDEMIA might take issue with that claim, since you literally do NOT touch the fingerprint reader in IDEMIA’s MorphoWave product. IDEMIA does not (to my knowledge) make any medical claims about MorphoWave, but the company does emphasize that its contactless fingerprint reader allows for fast capture of four-finger slaps.

To protect their premises, organizations need access control solutions that are efficient, fast, and convenient. A contactless fingerprint scanner provides an optimum answer high throughput workplaces. IDEMIA’s MorphoWave™ contactless fingerprint solution scans and verifies 4 fingerprints in less than 1 second, through a fully touchless hand wave gesture. Thanks to the simplicity of this gesture, the throughput can reach up to 50 people per minute.

An antimicrobial contact fingerprint reader?

But what if there were a CONTACT solution that allowed you to capture prints with a reduced fear of “bad things”?

That’s what Integrated Biometrics appears to be claiming.

Integrated Biometrics (IB), the world leader in mobile, FBI-certified biometric fingerprint scanners, and NBD Nanotechnologies (NBD Nano), the surface coating experts, today announced the inclusion of NBD’s RepelFlex MBED transparent coating on IB’s entire line of fingerprint scanners.

An ultra-thin, transparent coating, RepelFlex MBED is designed to provide outstanding antimicrobial, anti-scratch, and anti-stain protection to devices. Long-lasting and multi-functional, RepelFlex MBED is ideal for surfaces that must stand up to high throughput and harsh conditions without compromising accuracy.

So what exactly does “antimicrobial” mean?

A cluster of *Escherichia coli* bacteria magnified 10,000 times. By Photo by Eric Erbe, digital colorization by Christopher Pooley, both of USDA, ARS, EMU. – This image was released by the Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, with the ID K11077-1 (next)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=958857

Let’s see how NBD Nano describes it.

Preventing the presence and growth of microbials on surfaces is becoming increasingly important. Antimicrobial performance is especially critical on surfaces that are accessible to the public in order to prevent the spread of stain and odor causing bacteria and microbes.

And if you drill further down in NBD Nano’s website, you find this information in a technical data sheet (PDF).

Antimicrobial Performance: Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) Z 2801 – PASS*
*as tested by Microchem Laboratory, Round Rock, TX

Now since I’m not up to date on my Japanese Industrial Standards, I had to rely on the good folks at the aforementioned Microchem Laboratory to explain what the standard actually means.

The JIS Z 2801 method tests the ability of plastics, metals, ceramics and other antimicrobial surfaces to inhibit the growth of microorganisms or kill them. The procedure is very sensitive to antimicrobial activity and has a number of real world applications anywhere from the hospital/clinical environment to a household consumer company concerned with the ability of a material they have to allow bacterial growth.

The JIS Z 2801 method is the most commonly chosen test and has become the industry standard for antimicrobial hard surface performance in the United States.

It may be antimicrobial, but what about preventing the “C” word?

Now you may have noticed that Microchem Laboratory, NBD Nano, and Integrated Biometrics did not make any medical claims regarding their products. None of them, for example, used the “C” word in any of their materials.

There’s a very, very good reason for that.

If any of these product providers were to make specific MEDICAL claims, then any sales in the United States would come under the purview of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

This is something that temperature scanner manufacturers learned the hard way.

Digression: if fever scanners are fever scanners, does that mean they are fever scanners?

Remember “fever scanners”? Those devices that were (and in some cases still are) pointed at your forehead as you enter a building or another secure area? I won’t get into the issues with these devices (what happens when the scanner is placed next to a building’s front entrance on a hot day?), but I will look at some of the claims about those scanners.

About a year ago, John Honovich of IPVM began asking some uncomfortable questions about the marketing of those devices, especially after the FDA clarified what thermal imaging systems could and could not do.

When used correctly, thermal imaging systems generally have been shown to accurately measure someone’s surface skin temperature without being physically close to the person being evaluated….

Thermal imaging systems have not been shown to be accurate when used to take the temperature of multiple people at the same time. The accuracy of these systems depends on careful set-up and operation, as well as proper preparation of the person being evaluated….

Room temperature should be 68-76 °F (20-24 °C) and relative humidity 10-50 percent….

The person handling the system should make sure the person being evaluated…(h)as waited at least 15 minutes in the measurement room or 30 minutes after exercising, strenuous physical activity, bathing, or using hot or cold compresses on the face.

Let’s stop right there. For any of you who have undergone a temperature scan in the last year: how many of you have waited in a measurement room for at least 15 minutes BEFORE your temperature was taken?

Last summer I had a dentist appointment. My dentist is in Ontario, California, where the summers can get kind of hot. The protocol at this dentist’s office was to have you call the office from your car when you arrived in the parking lot, then wait for someone from the office to come outside and take your temperature before you could enter the building.

I was no dummy. I left my car and its air conditioner running while waiting for my temperature to be taken. Otherwise, who knows what my temperature reading would have been? (I also chose NOT to walk to the dentist’s office that day for the same reason.)

Back to John Honovich. He had read the FDA advice on the medical nature of thermal imaging systems, and then noted that some of the manufacturers of said systems were sort of getting around this by stating that their devices were not medical devices.

Even though the manufacturers still referred to them as “fever cameras.”

For example, one vendor (who has since changed its advertising) declared at the time that “thermal temperature-monitoring technology assists in reducing the spread of viral diseases,” even though that vendor’s device “is not a medical device and is not designed or intended for diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of any disease or condition.”

Fever scanners, testosterone supplements…and fingerprint readers

Yes, that language is similar to the language used by providers of natural supplements that, according to anecdotal evidence, work wonders. The FDA really polices this stuff.

So you really don’t want to make medical claims about ANY product unless you can back them up with the FDA. You can say that a particular product passed a particular antimicrobial standard…but you’d better not say anything else.

In fact, Integrated Biometrics only mentions the “antimicrobial” claim in passing, but spends some time discussing other benefits of the NBD Nano technology:

The inclusion of RepelFlex MBED coatings enable IB’s scanners to deliver an even higher level of performance. Surfaces are tougher and more difficult to scratch or stain, increasing their longevity while maintaining print quality even when regular cleaning is not possible due to conditions or times of heavy use.

So the treated Integrated Biometrics products are tough…like those famous 1970s crime fighters Kojak, Columbo, and Danno and the other people from Five-O. (Not that Sherlock and Watson were slouches.)

Book ’em, Danno! By CBS Television – eBay item photo front photo back, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19674714

On win themes and proposal themes

Once you’ve figured out the benefits of your solution for various customer stakeholders, you need to communicate the benefits in your proposal.

Sorry, this is a different type of “WIN.” Whip Inflation Now needlework picture. By Unknown author – Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20829024

While I try to avoid complexity where possible, there are times when the communication of benefits will follow a hierarchy. Cheryl Smith describes two levels of the hierarchy in her Privia blog post:

Win Themes. These subtle messages are woven into your proposal narrative, reinforcing your Win Strategy. Knowing specifically what they are upfront will help reviewers know what to look for and identify how and where to improve them.
Proposal Themes. These explicit, section-specific statements are used to guide the evaluator as they read. Knowing specifically what they are upfront will help reviewers test how well they support your Win Theme(s) and identify how to improve them.

As you may recall, different evaluators read different sections of a proposal. For an automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) proposal, you may have a certified latent examiner reading the latent entry section of the proposal, while an information technology person might read the network and security section of the proposal.

Unless you’re a sole proprietor, your win themes, proposal themes, and benefits will probably need some level of buyoff from multiple people. Perhaps your salesperson will advance some themes, but maybe his or her boss will need to approve them. (Approvals are a necessary evil in the proposal process.)

And then when the writers actually write the proposal, the writing will be measured (among other methods) for its faithfulness to the themes. Smith addresses this measurement also:

Be careful what you ask for. When you ask reviewers a generic question like “feedback,” you should expect a generic answer like, “this is weak.” Instead, ask reviewers a specific question like “how can I improve this section” or “how can I support this Win Theme”? This small adjustment in reviewer mind-set will transform a “this is weak” comment into an “add this proof point to strengthen the section” instruction.

This is something discussed by Carl Dickson (someone I’ve mentioned before in another context).

In the perfect world, a proposal—even a proposal hundreds of pages long—will have consistent themes throughout. It won’t sound like it was written by a bunch of different people—even though it probably WAS written by a bunch of different people.

One of my clients is a practitioner of something called a “book of truth,” a short document distributed to all of the writers for a particular proposal. The book of truth not only states the win themes and proposal themes, but also has some rules for consistency, such as how to refer to the customer. You don’t want to refer to the customer as “Los Angeles County” on page 2, “the County of Los Angeles” on page 7, “L.A. County” on page 9, and “San Francisco” on page 11.

Yes, the latter can happen when you repurpose text and don’t check it carefully. Watch out, because despite the fact that San Francisco and Los Angeles are in the same state, they are not the same city, despite what some people might think.

Calendarizing content

(And verbing nouns, but that’s an entirely different topic.)

You may have heard of the acronym WiFLi, which stands for Wider, Faster, Lighter and is used by one manufacturer within the bicycling community.

WiFLi is SRAM’s name for a 2x drivetrain with wide-range cassette. The short cage eTap rear derailleur officially maxes out with a 28-tooth cog; the eTap WiFLi rear derailleur can take up to a 32-tooth cog. This provides lower gears—for higher cadences and easier hill climbing—than a traditional 2x drivetrain, without needing to sign up for a triple-chainring drivetrain.

(Um, has anyone in the bicycling industry heard of benefit statements rather than feature statements? Is the 28-tooth cog missing the wisdom teeth?)

So maybe you’ve heard of bicycling’s WiFLI. But you may not have heard of MY acronym WIFLI, which stands for “when I feel like it.”

For the most part, my blogging at Bredemarket and other places is conducted in a WIFLI fashion. I’ll get an idea, jot down some things about it, sleep on it (sometimes), and then distribute it to the world at the Bredemarket blog and other online locations.

More often than not I DO “feel like it,” so my social outlets don’t necessarily suffer from lack of content. But do my momentary whims lead me to create the RIGHT content?

And this, my friends, is why people suggest content calendars. Although you don’t need to keep them on paper these days.

A calendar from the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad. By Visitor7 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26340569

Content calendars exist not only to make sure that you’re generating enough content, but that you’re generating the right content.

One of my goals at Bredemarket is to assist general technology customers, so this, my first post under my new Bredemarket content calendar schedule, is supposed to be a technology post. (I can’t post about identity all the time, after all.)

And I chose to write this technology post about content calendar technology.

I think that’s cheating. (If it were identity day, would I have posted an autobiography?)

But there ARE technology issues to consider when creating a content calendar. You can either adapt common tools such as Excel (example) or Trello (example) to create your content calendar, or you can use special-purpose applications such as Agorapulse or DivvyHQ or Loomly or Monday to do it.

As of now, I’m leaning toward the “adapt common tools” route, and the common tool that I adapted was…Google Calendar. I just created an additional calendar, called it “blog/social content calendar,” and marked the days on which I wanted to address different topics. I’m putting notes in the calendar entries as needed to spur my creation, distribution, and so forth.

Perhaps I can get fancy later, but for now this is getting me started. In the future I may iterate toward something more complex, or alternatively I may iterate away from the entire idea of a content calendar altogether.

The important thing is to start, evaluate, and then adjust.

Now I obviously can’t go to clients and tell them that I am an expert at content calendars, with deep knowledge of the topic. But I at least know the questions to ask.

What are the important topics that your company wants to address?
How will you address those topics? Blogging? LinkedIn? Paper planes flown through potential clients’ open windows?
How often do you want to create content?
Can you truly create content at that pace?

If you want me to fire a bunch of these and similar questions at you, and possibly to help you create content that aligns with your content calendar, contact me.

(Past illustrations) Deriving determinants of bid prices

PROBLEM

For a particular product line, a company wanted to know which variables could be used to predict how a particular bid would be priced.

By Bernard Gagnon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18185578

SOLUTION

Using data from FOIA requests, I identified and collected variables that were perceived to have an effect on bid price. In addition to the final price for each bid, I also collected relevant technical requirements from the bid, customer characteristics, bid evaluation scores where available, and other data.

After I collected the data, my colleague analyzed the data statistically, both to try to derive equations that fit the data, and also to illustrate the data in graphical form.

RESULTS

For this particular product line, the data did not closely correlate to any particular equation that could be used to predict bid price. (A separate analysis of a different product line yielded better correlation results.)

If you have a paid version of Microsoft Office 365, you have an audio transcription tool

I’ve been meaning to write about the tools that I’ve found to be most useful in my Bredemarket work, but I’ve never gotten around to actually write about them. Maybe one of the companies will sponsor my post or something.

Well, this post isn’t a sponsored post, because I don’t think that Microsoft regards me as an important enough influencer to throw money Bredemarket’s way. But I recently used a Microsoft feature to save myself some significant time on a client project.

As part of the work that I do for one of my clients, I participate in half-hour interviews with the client’s customers and ask them questions about the client’s software. Before the interview begins, the client asks the customer for permission to record the conversation. After the interview is over, I can then refer to that recording to extract nuggets of information.

You can imagine the process.

Advance two minutes on the recording to get past the preliminaries.
Listen for a few seconds.
Fast forward 30 seconds.
Fast forward 30 seconds again.
Oh, that’s good! Back up 10 seconds.
Listen for a few seconds while typing.
Stop.
Listen and type more.
Fast forward 30 seconds.

As you can see, it takes a while. So I began thinking about transcribing the recording to make things easier.

My first attempt didn’t go so well. I opened up a copy of Microsoft Word on my computer and opened up the recording, then I pressed Word’s “Dictate” button while starting the recording.

Good idea in theory, but it didn’t work in practice. And even if it had worked, it would have taken 30 minutes to dictate the entire interview.

So I did some research and found this article from Beebom. It described a “transcribe” feature in Microsoft Word, but you could only use it under certain conditions.

You have to have a paid version of Microsoft Office 365.
You have to use the web version of Word, not the on-computer version.
Your audio file cannot be larger than 200 megabytes.
Your audio ~~has~~ doesn’t have to be in the English language. While this was apparently true at the time the Beebom article was written, it looks like the transcription software now supports dozens of languages.
You cannot transcribe more than five hours’ worth of audio in any month.

I was able to meet all of these conditions, luckily. When you use the online version of Word, the “Dictate” button becomes a “Dictate/Transcribe” button, allowing you to upload an audio file to OneDrive and then transcribe it.

Transcription is much faster than real time. In my case, the service transcribed 30 minutes’ worth of audio in a few minutes.

You can then save the transcription to Microsoft Word (cloud or on-premise), and can include timestamps if you desire. The transcription also attempts to identify speakers separately.

I can say that the transcription was fairly good. I did not need five nines’ accuracy on the transcription; I just needed to figure out what we were talking about. And if I had needed to clean up any portion of the transcript, the timestamps could guide me to the exact place in the audio.

So this provided time savings for me, and also provided benefits for my client, since I was able to easily identify more “nuggets of information” than I could have the old fashioned way.

Now there are certainly other services out there, and this particular service isn’t technically a free service (since I had to pay for the Microsoft Office 365 subscription), but in certain cases transcription services are worth the money you paid for them.

Shorter and sweeter? The benefits of benefits for identity firms

Repurposing is fun.

Remember the four posts that I wrote earlier this week about communicating benefits to identity customers? Well, I just summarized all four of the posts on a single page on the Bredemarket website, The benefits of benefits for identity firms.

(And now I’m repurposing that page into a single, short blog post. It’s a succinct way to establish my bona fides as an identity content marketing expert.)

The page concludes with a question:

Why is Bredemarket the best choice to help your identity firm communicate its benefits?

No identity learning curve.
I’ve probably communicated in the format you need.
I work with you.
I can package my offering to meet your needs.

For the complete page, click here. And if you are an identity firm that needs my services, contact me.