Inclusively Telecom

Inclusively with Mansoor Hanif | The cities of the future

We were joined on Inclusively by Mansoor Hanif, recently of Neom, previously with BT/EE and Ofcom. Mansoor is currently enjoying himself as an angel investor (for instance in Darabase) and strategic advisor after his recent stint in the desert. He brings vast experience to the discussion about how we build more inclusive cities in the future. His ideas will make you think differently about how we live our urban lives going forward.
You can find out more about Inclusively Telecom and the live Inclusively events at
https://senzafili.com/inclusively_in_telecom/
Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at inclusively@senzafili.com 
You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify.

Inclusively with Giovanni Severini, Microsoft | Better sound quality for assistive hearing devices

Current Classic Audio Bluetooth connectivity to assistive hearing devices does not deliver a good quality of experience and requires too much power. Bluetooth Low Energy Audio (LE Audio) is a new technology for audio streaming over Bluetooth that allows audio devices to run longer on a charge, with increased audio quality and reduced latency.
We talked to Giovanni Severini, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft, about how LE Audio can help people with hearing impairment and how Microsoft supports the technology and has partnered with the hearing device ecosystem to ensure the new technology is rapidly adopted by vendors and users.
Watch Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger's demo on the solution mentioned by Giovanni:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuU2YJohuZE&t=3440s
For more information:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/accessible-technology-products#areaheading-uid4a20
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-hearing-devices-with-your-windows-11-pc-fcb566e7-13c3-491a-ad5b-8219b098d647
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrN4TOkVL0M
https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-recruits-accessibility-app-to-make-its-ai-more-useful-to-blind-and-low-vision-users-130006439.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=linkedin
You can find out more about Inclusively Telecom and the live Inclusively events at
https://senzafili.com/inclusively_in_telecom/
Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at inclusively@senzafili.com 
You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify.

Inclusively with Salesforce | Building accessibility into products from scratch

Salesforce has built accessibility and inclusive design into its processes, products and services and established an accessibility group at the heart of the business. Its multi-pronged approach benefits from executive buy-in and builds up from the bottom with a specialist accessibility team spreading the word throughout the organization.
In this Inclusively conversation, Jacqui Tolisano  Senior Director, Product Accessibility and Adam Rodenbeck, Senior Digital Accessibility Engineer at Salesforce, joined Chris Lewis and Monica Paolini to explore how this inclusive approach works within the Salesforce model and how their lessons learned can be applied to the telecoms industry.
 
You can find out more about Inclusively Telecom and the live Inclusively events at
https://senzafili.com/inclusively_in_telecom/
Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at inclusively@senzafili.com 
You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

Inclusively with BeMyEyes | Creating a more accessible world with AI for blind people

Be My Eyes is a fantastic example of how human volunteers and, now, AI, leveraging the power of smart phones, can help blind people interact with the world around them. From a simple start using the phone camera to help guide someone around their home, it has now evolved into a global business helping blind people, as well as businesses serving their blind and vision impaired customers.  
Chris and Monica talked to Hans Jørgen Wiberg, Founder, and Jesper Hvirring Henriksen, CTO at Be My Eyes.
Read Chris' summary of the podcast at 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-eyes-creating-more-accessible-world-ai-chris-lewis-otmpe
You can find out more about Inclusively Telecom and the live Inclusively events at
https://senzafili.com/inclusively_in_telecom/
Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at inclusively@senzafili.com 
You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

Inclusively Telecom: Introduction

Chris Lewis and Lewis Insight, and Monica Paolini at Senza Fili, the hosts of Inclusively Telecom introduce the new podcast. They talk about the format, goals, topic and approach.
You can find out more about Inclusively Telecom and the live Inclusively events at
https://senzafili.com/inclusively_in_telecom/
Send us feedback, questions, and suggestions for guests and topics at inclusively@senzafili.com 
You can subscribe to the podcast on the platform of your choice, including Apple and Spotify

Inclusively | How can both women and men benefit from gender diversity?

Diversity benefits everyone—people, businesses and customers. How can we improve gender diversity in the workplace, in our daily work practices and in our environment to benefit both women and men? In this Inclusively conversation, in collaboration with UKTIN, women and men compare their perspectives on how gender diversity plays out and how to create a work environment and career opportunities that fit everybody.
Chris Lewis and Monica Paolini hosted this conversation with Lesley Holt at UKTIN, Marc Gilmour at ConnectiviTree, and Vicky Messer at Picocom, starting with three questions:
What is the impact of imbalanced workplaces?
What do women and men want? Is it different? How?
How can women and men jointly make the workplace more flexible and open to encourage women’s participation?

Inclusively | Can Wi-Fi sensing help elderly and disabled people?

Inclusivity starts at home. Being able to live independently at home is, for many of us, fundamental to our quality of life. How can technology help us live on our own more safely and give our caretakers better tools to assist us?
We talked to Saibal Chakraburtty, Director of Product Management at Cognitive Systems, about how Wi-Fi sensing can do this.
Wi-Fi sensing uses the Wi-Fi radio signal to detect motion within the Wi-Fi network coverage area. Unlike location-based services, sensing detects the motion of people, pets or objects that have no connected device or sensor, making it very inobtrusive to deploy and operate. In a home environment, it is more respectful of privacy boundaries and does not require a smart home separate infrastructure.
By tracking human motion in a residential environment, Wi-Fi sensing can detect anomalies (e.g., your mother did not get up this morning, or your father keeps going out of the house for hours at unusual hours) or other patterns that may alert caretakers or trigger an emergency response. We talked about what the technology can do, how it can be deployed and operated, how can Wi-Fi sensing services be deployed, and what are the use cases for elderly and disabled people who want to live on their own.

Inclusively | Driving accessibility, inclusion and diversity from the top at Colt

Rachel Collins, Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Colt joined us in this Inclusively event. Rachel brings a wealth of experience and will describe how accessibility, inclusion and diversity form a key part of building the business and culture of which Colt is rightly very proud. This comes from the very top of Colt and the CEO’s very open ESG agenda. 

Inclusively | AI and ML: friend or foe of inclusion?

AI and ML are powerful tools that can improve our lives, but also can create social and economic challenges, and increase inequality. What role can they play in promoting inclusion, reducing biases, helping people with physical and mental disabilities? Or can they hinder these efforts? Is there something we need to do to ensure that AI and ML will bring a positive contribution?
Our guest was Greg Mayo at NETSCOUT, an expert on AI and ML with experience in mentoring and volunteering youth facing challenging social conditions. We talked about how these new technologies can improve these experiences and conditions.

Inclusively: Building inclusion at TELUS

Ibrahim Gedeon, CTO at TELUS, joined us in a live conversation to explore how he sees the organization and the wider ecosystem building towards a more inclusive future both inside of the telco but also extending out to customers in Canada.
We explored how technology and business model shifts bring many exciting opportunities to build a better-connected society and industries. Ibrahim shared his perspectives on how technology and culture shape this transformation. Never shy to share his opinions on key matters, Ibrahim was instantly up to join us to discuss how we build this more inclusive future.

Inclusively: How can women succeed and improve the workplace?

This year, at Inclusively, we celebrated our first International Women’s Day as we are still in our early infancy, having launched it last fall, with a wide-ranging conversation on how gender diversity is valuable in telecoms for women, men and business. 
Increasing women’s participation in the workforce, especially at high levels, is more than a box to check or a quota to meet. It improves profitability and the workplace for everybody and gives women the opportunities they deserve. Yet it also requires real work – we need to actively change the way we operate as an industry to increase women’s participation in the workforce. 
In this Inclusively event, Antonella Faniuolo, Head of Network Demand Planning Delivery and Transformation for Europe at Vodafone, and Eugina Jordan, CMO at Telecom Infra Project (TIP), shared their experience and vision, and told us what they are doing to increase gender diversity in the workplace both strategically and in their daily activities.

Inclusively | Thinking inclusively in telecoms

A more inclusive approach from all parts of the communications industry will bring benefits to everyone. It will open access to digital services to those formerly excluded. It will create new services. It will generate new revenue opportunities. And it will underpin the customer experience every customer expects.
Chris Lewis, Lewis Insight, and Monica Paolini, Senza Fili, discuss how inclusive design can benefit all parties involved in the ecosystem. And, in case you think this doesn’t impact your business, we want to convince you that it does: focusing on the customers often left on the sidelines will result in a better experience for all. Not only does this allow you to offer new services, but it also changes the way your workforce operates, your internal processes and your interaction with your customers. Being inclusive is not just the right thing to do: it is a way to get new revenues from neglected customers for services they need.
Many customer groups are excluded from the benefits of being connected for various reasons. People with disabilities, the elderly, and digitally impoverished users are groups with specific challenges that are ignored or addressed only by proprietary and expensive technologies or specialist providers. The result is a fragmented market that is ineffective at meeting their needs and unnecessarily separates them from mainstream users.
This is an initial conversation. We look for your input on how we should expand our work on this front. We plan to open our discussion in further conversations with service providers, vendors, regulators and researchers with the hope that inclusion and diversity will flip telecoms on its head and make the future of your organization and our industry more sustainable.

Inclusively with Rakuten | Embracing diversity and inclusion

We were honored to have Tareq Amin, CEO at Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony, as our first guest on Inclusively. Tareq shared his experience at Rakuten in creating and supporting a diverse customer base and workforce. Diversity at Rakuten is an integral part of the culture and of the success of the company, and for Tareq, both a business and personal priority.
There were no slides – we had an honest and open conversation about the challenges we face in making telecoms more inclusive and benefiting from inclusivity.