Daily Archives: March 24, 2020

By Sindhu Gangadharan

Throughout history women have been denied their share of voice due to their gender. But over time, through sheer grit and boldness, women have challenged this and have pushed their way to rise to the top in the society.

Several studies have proven the economic benefits that organizations and the society can reap through gender parity. A gender-equal workplace benefits employee, customers and partners, and that is why we at SAP became the firstmultinational IT Company to achieve the Economic Dividends for Gender Equality (EDGE) certification.

McKinseys The Power of Parity report, points out thatIndia wouldeconomically benefit the most by achieving gender equality, provided we work towards a comprehensive change.

It is gratifying to observe that several women are taking up STEM education today, as these would contribute to quickly raising thelevels of women employees in technology companies, which today is as lowas 26 percent.

While a lot is being done by corporates to increase the share of womens voice in their companies, women too need to step up and take challenging roles. Today, theopportunities for women to raise in the ranks in technology companies are numerous.

In my 20 years of experience with SAP, I have had many opportunities come my way -some because I put in effort to constantly enhance my skill and did not shy away from embracing challenges.

A lesson I learnt early on in my career is something that is still close to my heart. In 2001, when I moved to Germany from India, I realized that in order to break barriers and understand the culture, it was important to learn the language. Doing this helped me feel inclusive and I gained a deeper understanding of the society and the people.

I have been able to break barriers and face challenges because I believe in perseverance, setting goals and working hard to achieve them. If you forge ahead towards your aspirations, you will realize them when the time is right.

Many women acquittance who are in various stages of their career, have told me in external meetings that they notice a perceivable change in the body language,especially when they are the sole women in that meeting. My suggestion to them is that such prejudice caneasily be demolished by the value of content one brings to the table. It is therefore important for women to drive the change and take control of the narrative when faced with biases.

People in Germany used to ask if it was any different for me, growing up in India, and I always said it wasnt. Growing up in Bengaluru, my mother had the same expectations from me that she had of my two brothers.

Women are evolving away from compartmentalization. Our focus should be to achieve a flow between all aspects of our lives. Often, I hear from women and male colleagues that an ideal work life balance is central to a successful life.I, however do not subscribe to this view. Work and family are not disjointed but integral parts of our lives. Both can be managed smoothly if one learns to prioritize work, manage time and enjoy what they do.

I would advise women to constantly keep pushing the envelope, not box themselves with small range of possibilities, but rather look to taking on bigger goals. A workplace that provides equal opportunity to everyone is not just beneficial to women but the society at large.

Technology companies today are much moreopen and welcoming towardswomen leaders. In all aspects of the society, women have driven thechange and can further dothis through our leadership.

(Disclaimer: The author of this article is the Senior Vice-President and MD of SAP Labs, India, and the views expressed herein are her own)

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Demystifying the Role of Women in Technology - CXOToday.com

Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is one of the marquee features for Nvidias RTX video cards, but its also one people tend to overlook or outright dismiss. The reason for that is because many people equate the technology to something like a sharpening filter that can sometimes reduce the jagged look of lower-resolution images. But DLSS uses a completely different method with much more potential for improving visual quality, and Nvidia is ready to prove that with DLSS 2.0.

Nvidia built the second-generation DLSS to address all of the concerns with the technology. It looks better, gives players much more control, and should support a lot more games. But at its core, DLSS 2.0 is still about using machine learning to intelligently upscale a game to a higher resolution. The idea is to give you a game that, for example, looks like it is running at 4K while actually rendering at 1080p or 1440p. This drastically improves performance. And, in certain games, it can even produce frames that contain more detail than native rendering.

For DLSS, Nvidia inputs a game into a training algorithm to determine what the visuals are supposed to look like at the sharpest possible fidelity. And this is one of the areas where DLSS 2.0 is a significant leap forward. Nvidia originally needed a bespoke training model for every game. DLSS 2.0, however, uses the same neural network for every game. This means Nvidia can add DLSS support to more games at a more rapid pace.

Then using that deep-learning data, DLSS can then use the Tensor GPU cores on Nvidias RTX cards to process what a 1080p frame should look like at 4K. And this method is so much more powerful than sharpening because it is rebuilding from data that isnt even necessarily present in each frame. Heres the result:

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries and Control are the first two games to support DLSS 2.0. They will get the benefit of the more efficient AI network. This version of the tech is twice as fast on the Tensor cores already available in RTX cards like the RTX 2060 up to the RTX 2080 Ti.

Nvidia has also added temporal feedback to its DLSS system. This enables the super-sampling method to get information about how objects and environments change over time. DLSS 2.0 can then use that temporal feedback to improve the sharpness and stability from one frame to the next.

But the advantages go beyond improved processing. DLSS 2.0 also turns over more control to the player. One of the disadvantages of DLSS in many games is that it was often a binary choice. Either it was on or off, and developers got to decide how DLSS behaved.

DLSS 2.0 flips that by giving three presets: Quality, Balanced, and Performance. In Performance mode, DLSS 2.0 can take a 1080p frame and upscale it all the way up to 2160p (4K). Quality mode, meanwhile, may upscale 1440p to 2160p.

But you dont necessarily need a 4K display to get the advantages of DLSS 2.0. You can use the tech on a 1080p or 1440p display, and it will often provide better results than native rendering.

Again, this is possible because DLSS 2.0 is working from more data than a native 1080p frame. And all of this is going to result in higher frame rates and playable games even when using ray tracing.

DLSS 2.0 is rolling out soon as part of a driver update for RTX cards.

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Nvidias DLSS 2.0 aims to prove the technology is essential - VentureBeat

HOUSTON, March 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sterling Group, a Houston-based middle market private equity firm, announced that its portfolio company, Tangent Technologies, completed the acquisition of Bedford Technology at the end of February. Headquartered in Aurora, Illinois, Tangent is a leading manufacturer of high-density polyethylene ("HDPE") lumber used for outdoor furniture, site amenities, structural applications, and marine decking. Bedford is a leading plastic lumber extruder in North America with excellence in structural and semi-structural product lines, primarily used in marine infrastructure projects, boardwalks, fencing, as well as a broad range of industrial applications.

In recent years, HDPE lumber has become a leading substitute for traditional building materials in outdoor furniture and other applications given its durability and aesthetics. Tangent and Bedford both use post-consumer recycled milk bottles as a primary raw material along with many other post-industrial recycled waste streams. Combining Tangent and Bedford creates a leading alternative materials innovation team and expands both business' plastic lumber product lines.

"We are excited to partner with Bedford and expand the combined plastic lumber product lines and solutions," said Guy DeFeo, CEO of Tangent. "With the addition of Bedford, we will build a broader facility footprint across North America as well as build one of the best alternative material innovation organizations for our customers."

"We are looking forward to increasing sustainable manufacturing capabilities and expanding our innovation capabilities through this partnership with Tangent," said Jeff Breitzman, CEO and President of Bedford Technology. "The talent and skills that both organizations are bringing to the table will enhance how the combined company serves its customers and will fuel many new growth opportunities," said Brian Larsen, Founder of Bedford Technology and former CEO.

About The Sterling Group

Founded in 1982, The Sterling Group is a private equity investment firm that targets controlling interests in basic manufacturing, distribution and industrial services companies. Typical enterprise values of these companies range from $100 million to $750 million. Sterling has sponsored the buyout of 56 platform companies and numerous add-on acquisitions for a total transaction value of over $10.0 billion. Currently, Sterling has over $2.0 billion of assets under management. For further information, please visit http://www.sterling-group.com.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results and all investments are subject to loss.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tangent-technologies-a-portfolio-company-of-the-sterling-group-completes-the-acquisition-of-bedford-technology-301028380.html

SOURCE The Sterling Group

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Tangent Technologies, a Portfolio Company of The Sterling Group, Completes The Acquisition of Bedford Technology - Yahoo Finance

The COVID-19 pandemic has dominated headlines with public fears mounting and governments around the world scrambling to find ways to control the spread of the virus. Many governments have declared national emergencies, with the Canadian federal government also considering this as option.

In the midst of these fears, tech companies in the United States have reportedly been in talks with the U.S. government and other agencies to use their data gathering and data location tools to track virus transmission trends. This includes the controversial facial-recognition startup, Clearview AI.

The use of Clearview AI by Canadian police agencies has sparked much media coverage focusing on the privacy implications of the application. It matches uploaded photographs of individuals with billions of other photos scraped mainly from social media and stored on Amazon servers. The technology infringes privacy laws by exploiting the biometric data of ordinary individuals without their consent.

As reports first began to emerge on the use of Clearview AI by American police, it became evident that Canadian police were also testing and using the technology; not all were initially forthcoming on their use.

One of the common themes among police agencies in Canada was that Clearview AI was used by individual officers within different investigative units. What became apparent was the lack of knowledge of Clearview AIs use by senior management in some police departments. It was only after leaked documents of Clearview AIs client list that police agencies began conducting internal investigations to see which of their officers used the application, in what units, and how many times.

The use of such technologies reveals a larger issue that goes beyond privacy, namely how surveillance technologies are deployed by police agencies in the first place.

This is not the first time that police agencies in Canada have adopted a technology in a similar ad hoc manner. Long before Clearview AI, senior management within local police agencies in Canada began to adopt social media as an investigative tool, after individual officers noticed their utility for investigations and intelligence gathering. Research has also shown police officers in Canada utilizing new methods of investigations including monitoring social media, initially unbeknownst by senior management.

Police agencies newfound interest in social media fostered a new market for tech companies selling social media monitoring or listening technologies. These use natural language processing to identify and monitor keywords not protected by privacy settings on social platforms, with some companies providing trials to police.

Both tech companies and police argue that social media accounts not set to private can be considered publicly available information, or open source, and available for anyone to see.

Tor Ekeland, the lawyer for Clearview AI, has used this very same logic, arguing that the photographs of the faces that the application gathers and stores is publicly available information.

Police forces are increasingly relying on AI for data collection and analysis. Open source information from social media is playing a role in shaping the development of new AI tools. Photographs may not be the only type of social media data subject to Clearview AIs algorithmic analysis voice recognition is also apparently under development.

Efforts are now being made by federal and provincial privacy regulators to build a framework on the use and regulation of biometric data, including facial recognition software used by organizations including the police, though it is unknown what this framework will look like until after the bodies complete their investigations.

In response to COVID-19, governments in Canada keep reminding the public that these are extraordinary times that require extraordinary measures. The effects of COVID-19 extend beyond its health impact. Tech companies can use the fear arising from the crisis to spread more surveillance technologies, offering them to governments as solutions to control the spread of the virus.

For example, facial recognition like Clearview AI could be used to identify anyone whos been in contact with an infected person similar to how tech companies responded in the U.S. after 9/11 with the passing of the Patriot Act, paving way to mass surveillance

Government and agencies including law enforcement need to practice extreme caution and openness if measures involve surveillance technologies. There is potential that they may become features of everyday life long after the virus has gone, opening up new areas of use (or abuse) a phenomenon known as surveillance creep.

Surveillance technologies can come at a cost not only to privacy, but to other political rights and freedoms their use can cost innocent people the right to live their lives free of surveillance. Marginalized communities are even more vulnerable given their history in being over-policed.

The revelations about the use of Clearview AI by police in Canada reveals little oversight on how surveillance technologies are adopted, used and for what purpose. This calls for more understanding on the use of such technologies by police and for proper internal and external mechanisms of accountability. Fears from COVID-19 shouldnt lead to any knee-jerk reactions that will affect our democracy once the pandemic is over.

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Police and governments may increasingly adopt surveillance technologies in response to coronavirus fears - The Conversation CA

Even though an annual choral festival in San Bernardino County, California was canceled this year because of coronavirus concerns, a group of high school choir singers wanted their community to hear their voice anyway.

On May 13, all 35 schools in the district shut their doors, Imee Perius, director of communications for Chino Valley Unified School District, told CNN. The Chino Valley Unified School District Choral Festival, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was one of the first events canceled following that announcement.

That's when 19 Chino Hills High School chamber singers stepped up to record their individual parts to a song they'd practiced together for months, only this time, they had to sing alone and on camera. An editor working with the district took each student's part and spent 36 hours stringing together this performance.

In the video, the singers fill the screen to deliver their portion of the classic "Over the Rainbow," in the style of Israel Kamakawiwoole. After a quick countdown, in full harmony, the virtual performance begins.

Camille Cortes, one of the singers in the video, told CNN she's been in choir all four years of her high school career.

"It was really devastating for all of us knowing that we might not get the opportunity to sing together anymore," she said. "Our choir is more of a family."

The end product shows a video with 19 voices woven together. Cortes said it took her two hours to get the right video version done for her part.

Cortes said she was skeptical of how the song would turn out, but pleased when she saw the end result.

"The students have come together even though they are apart and contributed to this time in our history and I think they're so happy about that," Perius said. "This is the kind of silver lining that we all need right now."

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When their high school choir concert was canceled, technology helped them sing together anyway - CNN

COMMENTARY

Poor workforce decisions will undermine a critical national security asset

As the government moves through the COVID-19 crisis and asks its employees and contractors to telework from home, work in small group shifts, or perhaps not come in and work at all - even on fully funded programs, I was reminded of a maxim from my father.

He was one of the early employees of SRA International and a noted Vietnam era combat veteran and soldier. He said to me when I first went in the Army myself, youre going to fall in love at times with the Army, but dont be too disappointed when it struggles to find ways to love you back.

I pondered that for many years, trying to understand this enigmatic bit of advice, but what it really meant didnt sink in until I was a senior government official in the national security community. Then I saw that sometimes when a large institution undertakes its actions through the local decisions of its many constituent parts, it somehow finds ways to act in contravention to its own long-term interests. It ends up not loving the people it needs the most.

This phenomenon has happened too often over the past twenty years to the high-tech cleared contractor workforce that serves the national security community. Sensible and completely understandable decisions taken at local levels by government managers or prime contractors, who have a purposefully limited scope of authority, end up potentially damaging the long-term viability of the entire institution.

This has happened during the many budget imbroglios and sequestration crises over the past 10 years and is happening again in parts of the national security community as agencies respond to the Coronavirus pandemic.

In those cases, a partial shutdown of some kind was necessary because of a lack of funding or, at this current time, because a government site must be thinned out or closed as we aim to limit the spread of the virus through social distancing.

Nobody would argue with the absolute necessity of both of those actions. It would be wrong in a budget crisis to spend money the government has not appropriated, and wrong in a viral pandemic to keep sites fully staffed in the middle of the COVID-19 response.

But, the workforce implications of both necessary decisions are profound. And only one half of the governments national security workforce is insulated from the long-term debilitating effects that the stopping and starting of work can have on technology professionals who are looking to have a reliable and coherent career path.

Our government workforce is comprised of both government employees and contractors of course, and both parts perform critical and complementary roles. In the case of the government employees, interruptions to their work (caused by budget issues or pandemics) do not disrupt the flow of their career or their paycheck. or get made up in arrears.

In the case of their partners working side-by-side with them from the highly skilled technology contractor community, that is often not the case. If contractors get sent home for any reason or are not allowed to work and bill on projects, they often must take leave (with or without pay) or the company that employs them must carry them on overhead. All of which can be done - but none of which are sustainable.

I once got a call on a Thursday afternoon from a national security customer who said due to the budget issues on the Hill, on Monday I run out of money for half your people so youll have to keep them home perhaps for a few weeks. I reminded him that these employees were cleared computer scientists and crypto-mathematicians with long professional careers - not day laborers. What makes them want to stay in this industry the profession of a cleared national security professional - if they are being treated like day laborers who can be picked up (or not) for the day depending on funding or site access?

He agreed of course, thought it was a terrible situation and was sympathetic, but the conversation ended with an above my paygrade shrug. He was doing his job he was a government PM out of money for now and I couldnt blame him. The challenge of how my company and thousands of other companies were supposed to go about giving cleared technology professionals a coherent and rewarding career when they were on stop-start-stop-start programs was somebody elses problem.

But this long-term institutional necessity, for the contractor community to maintain, for the exclusive use of its government customers, a highly trained cleared technology workforce ready to shift, surge, or deploy on short notice, needs to be in somebodys paygrade. These professionals take a long time to recruit and grow. The government is short tens of thousands of them and critical work goes unfilled. We have become so accustomed to being perennially short of the needed workforce that this self-inflicted situation has become an accepted scandal the national security community has learned to live with.

When I was the chairman of the Professional Services Council, I met in 2013 with the then Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary. I told my day laborer vignette directly to them. They were also very sympathetic and extremely attendant to the need to treat their contractor workforce with the same care and long-term vision as their government workforce. They viscerally grasped that contractors were their workforce and one that takes a long time to assemble and train. They bemoaned the fact that mid-level managers in their organization were not following the guidance from above to be creative and productive in keeping the workforce engaged during the budget impasse.

That was the good news. They were disturbed by the phenomenon and knew it needed to be addressed. The bad news was finding someone below their paygrade who could own a long-term institutional plan to give contractors the same crisis-proof reliability in their career.

In addressing these issues, nobody is talking about hand-outs or giving a contractor a job for life we all know that we compete and work program by program. Programs start and programs end. This was about when a contractor is being prevented by the customer from doing the work for which they are currently contracted - for whatever reason. This was about insulating the long-term institutional requirement of building and maintaining a reliable trained workforce from the shut-down/stand-up decisions an agency or program manager may need to make in a crisis.

Every time our government goes through a crisis like a budget-driven shutdown or, as now, a pandemic-driven stoppage of some work, we lose technology talent to the commercial market. Why bother with a long intrusive clearance process only to get to work for a fickle customer who backstops their internal workforce during a crisis but not their contractor partners? During sequestration I watched some of our best data scientists in our Austin Texas office, after being told to stop work for three weeks on their program, walk across the street to a commercial tech company and never come back.

On Friday afternoon, OMB, DoD, and DHS all put out guidance explicitly recognizing this phenomenon declaring the contractor work force essential, part of our critical infrastructure, and imploring agencies to be flexible, adaptive, and think long term in maintaining as normal a work schedule as possible for contractors. In the case of necessary site closures or shift work, this could simply mean some short term provisions to let the contractors make up the work they will miss after the crisis passes, or accept unclassified site work plans that would bolster the mission goals of the classified site work. The guidance suggests using special procurement authorities and other means to keep this workforce hale and engaged.

Even so, some agencies, sub-agencies, programs, sites, and even prime contractors are making COVID-19 decisions that are not inline with this intent a directive from our national security authorities. These decisions will hurt many smaller companies and drive talented and cleared technology workers out of the industry deepening the hole we are in for qualified and cleared personnel. Our adversaries are going to school on how we handle this crisis. What lessons are they learning?

We cannot afford to let the necessary short-term decisions about funding or site access undertaken in a crisis undermine the longer-term necessity of building and maintaining a high-tech cleared contractor work force. And a bail out is not necessary to do this. In fact, in the case of the COVID-19 crisis, the money is already funded for the programs on which some contractors are being told their work is limited during the social distancing period. As the OMB and DOD guidance states, let the contractors do their work and bill their hours over the course of time so that individual professionals can have the same comfort as their government counterparts about the long term.

No extra money is needed by the government to keep its contractor work force intact during a crisis, but some ownership of the situation is. Government officials at all levels, not just at the top, should be cognizant of their responsibility to keep both their workforces intact and motivated during crisis moments.

About the Author

John Hillen is the CEO of EverWatch Solutions and is a former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, and former Chairman of the Professional Services Council.

Continued here:

Don't take the national security contractor workforce for granted - Washington Technology

Posted March 24, 2020 06:09:13

Every Australian newborn could soon have access to donated breastmilk no matter where they are after scientists pioneered a way to convert the milk into powder without losing its critical life-saving properties.

While donor milk banks exist, both in hospitals and in the community, priority is given to premature babies who need shielding from complications or deadly diseases.

Scientists and lactation experts say the new technology means milk can be stored at room temperature for years, allowing it to be stockpiled and to support newborns otherwise unable to access milk.

Mother's Milk Bank on the Gold Coast offers donated milk to all mums, but the need for refrigeration limits how much can be sent and how far.

It will now supply its donated milk to the newly formed Australian Breast Milk Bank, which will process it into powder.

From there, the packets containing five feeds can form part of a national emergency reserve and be dispatched with a pouch of clean water to anywhere in the country even across the world.

Milk bank director Marea Ryan said the technology would save lives.

"This is amazing. It's just going to transform the health of babies right across Australia," she said.

The goal of the new national milk bank is to have the equivalent of 33,000 litres of powdered milk in storage enough for almost half a million feeds for a newborn.

At the moment, if a mum is unable to produce enough milk for their baby perhaps due to stress or a medical issue they either access a milk bank or begin using formula.

Ms Ryan said, once the bank reached capacity, any newborn who needed breastmilk would be able to access it.

She estimated that with four breastfeeding women donating one feed per day, the new bank could be fully stocked within two years.

Danielle Martin's six-week-old daughter Willow is happily sleeping on her lap. The pair seem content.

But Ms Martin, who lives in the Queensland town of Sarina, said feeding was not so blissful with her son Elijah, now 18 months old.

Within days of what she described as a "traumatic birth", she said her body was not producing enough milk to fill Elijah's belly. Ms Martin was eventually advised to switch to formula.

"He was starving. He wasn't getting enough from me," she said.

"I felt like I couldn't give him the one thing that my body should have been able to give him.

"I struggled to bond with him."

She said from there baby Elijah became constipated and irritable because the formula did not agree with him.

As her new baby battled so did she, eventually grappling with depression.

Ms Martin was not alone. A study of 2,500 women found those who had a negative experience with breastfeeding were more likely to endure post-natal depression two months after the birth of their baby.

The ready supply of breastmilk could also help those newborn bubs whose lives are touched by natural disasters or, more recently, a pandemic.

Ms Ryan said it was not unusual for mums to produce less milk as a result of stress and upheaval.

She said the goal was to stop babies from having to go without, regardless of whether a family was fleeing a storm or were forced into isolation due to COVID-19.

"When we go through things like floods, droughts or fires, they can have the breastmilk there for these babies under 12 months," Ms Ryan said.

"Because at the moment we have no contingency plans for emergency reserves of this essential food for babies."

University of Sydney Professor Richard Banati said the new technology took about three years for his team to perfect, and it was time to show the world.

"Australia could definitely become the first country to have absolute food security and food sovereignty for all its newborns," he said.

The milk powder acted as a top-up, so mothers could focus on recovering or building up supply whatever was needed so they could continue to feed their baby.

The process allowed the milk to be freeze-dried, so the need for cold storage was gone.

"And it can last essentially for years," Professor Banati said.

"If stored at room temperature and under dry conditions, it can be sent around the world."

Ms Ryan knows what it means to have to tell a mother they must go without breastmilk.

And in her career as a midwife, she watched babies perish because there was no alternative.

"I worked in a special care nursery and my role was to make sure that every baby in that nursery had breastmilk. I would go around and all the mothers with extra milk would give it to us," Ms Ryan said.

She said in the 1980s, a ban on sharing breastmilk came in as a result of rising HIV infections.

The deaths that followed inspired her to stop it ever happening again, and that led to the initial idea of removing water from breastmilk.

"When that stopped on the Friday, within three weeks, we had a baby that got an infection and died, which we'd never seen before," she said.

"I thought then, we are doing a disservice to the babies of the future because we're can't provide for them. And now we can."

And while Ms Martin and baby Willow did not need powdered breastmilk for now, the Queensland mum knew what it meant for those who came next.

"I think it would have made all the difference honestly," she said.

"It's amazing they won't have to go through the same struggle that I did."

Topics:breast-feeding,breastfeeding,womens-health,child-health-and-behaviour,pregnancy-and-childbirth,science-and-technology,family-and-children,women,health,human-interest,maroochydore-4558,tugun-4224,sydney-2000,australia

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Breastmilk available to every newborn thanks to new technology - ABC News

Thank you, DJ D-Nice. I wanted to put on my new spring hat and maybe go to a lounge or a grown and sexy set where one of my DJ friends could be spinning. The coronavirus and social distancing necessitated a different way for me to kick it. D-Nice supplied the necessary ammunition to quell my uncomfortable new paradigm. Quarantining in solitude has led to writing a new book that is due out in September.

Cultural connection describes the DJ D-Nice set and underscores the values of African-Americans who have used and leveraged their musical creativity to entertain the world and push forward the narrative of our needs, hopes and dreams in a setting that allows others to create new universes. To explore and to create for the pleasure of others connects us on several levels. But we must continuously protect our cultural ingenuity from others inclination to profit and steal our intellectual property.

Club Quarantine had lines wrapped around the world, wrapped around the universe, giving us a brief but necessary respite from the fact-challenged White House briefings. In our virtual club, our forever first family, the Obamas joined to dance and commiserate and many other VIPs were shouted out and recognized. We were all alone, but together at the same time. The DJ reminded the revelers to hold up those who are on the front line of this pandemic and to encourage clubbers to do our part to practice social distance. D-Nice demonstrated that he wanted to share a transformative creative experience. Did we really pay attention to all of the hats he was wearing literally and figuratively?

D-Nice embracing his unique gift and sharing it with all of us allowed him to be able to give our community a room that Mark Zuckerberg maybe never envisioned for his platform. We all now recognize that the platform supported a dream redefined, for its existence for a community that had a need for true healing, spiritual and cultural evolution and hope. D-Nice used music to summon a spirit of transformation from the Obamas, to everyday people, to major corporations around the world.

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Founder and publisher of rolling out's parent company Steed Media Group.

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DJ D-Nice, hip-hop music, and the cultural reification of technology - Rolling Out