hat would you get if the IoT (Internet of Things) and the metaverse got together and had a baby? What are the opportunities that might arise out of that union or intersection? To be honest, this is probably one of the more difficult prognostications to make. Why? Well, what is the metaverse? What is the IoT?
Continue readingIndustry Insight: The State of Smart Transportation
Smart transportation is closely tied with smart city initiatives. What happens when vehicle travels from a smart city to one that might not be so smart? Will autonomous vehicles bridge the intelligent transportation divide, or will autonomous vehicles rely on a smart infrastructure to support functions critical to improving public safety, traffic efficiency, and sustainability?
neXt Curve is joined by Bill Pugh, co-founder and managing partner of Smart Connections Consulting LLC to explore the following topics:
- Why does transportation need to be smarter? – Bill and Leonard discuss the motivations and the objectives that the auto industries and municipalities have for smart transportation. What is the carrot that is getting parties excited, or is the carrot not big enough to bring about the digital transformation we have all been expecting in some form?
- What are the challenges facing smart transportation? – Smart transportation has taken a patently vehicle-centric focus as of late with excitement about self-driving cars that will function as robotaxi’s that will chauffeur us around. But progress for smart transportation solutions that could benefit the broader driving community have been nothing short of stagnant with only a few pilot project of any notice. What are the persistent challenges that get in the way of the smart future of transportation?
- What kind of mindset change is need to make progress? – Do we have the right attitude about smart transportation? Could it be that we don’t think broadly enough about the benefits of modernizing our transportation system and how we will make that modernization happen?
- What can the tech and “IoT” industry do to deliver the promise? – Bill and Leonard brainstorm what the tech community and industry can do to make IoT a thing for transportation. We discuss the approaches that can be considered to get investments and commitments to stick given short-term political and administrative agendas of our cities, counties, states, an dour nation.

Our reThink Media Center features the YouTube video podcast of this episode.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Qualcomm Smart Cities Accelerate 2021: Key Takeaways
On September 28th, Qualcomm hosted its Smart Cities Accelerate event at their corporate headquarters in San Diego, California. On an unusually cloudy day, hundreds of attendees congregated outside for registration and a pre-event breakfast. The conference promised to be packed with exciting updates on Qualcomm’s progress with its IoT (Internet of Things) business and smart city ambitions. The IoT has become growing part of Qualcomm’s business which grew 83% year over year to a sizable $1.4 billion in Q3 of 2021.
Continue readingRealizing IoT Project Success
Technology Insight: NEOM
What if technology could not just make cities “smarter” but help us entirely reimagine the idea of a city of the future? NEOM is a visionary giga project that aspires to apply the most advanced in current and emerging technologies to realize a bold urban development concept called THE LINE, the revolutionary infrastructure concept that will bring about the world’s first “cognitive city”.
Continue readingIndustry Insight: Democratizing the Digital Twin – The Moab Foundation
The Digital Twin is considered by some the next big thing since network slicing. Rob Tiffany, renowned IoT pioneer established the non-profit Moab Foundation to bring the bigness of digital twins to do good in the world. The charter of the foundation aims to bring the benefits and enablement of IoT to bear in furthering the UN’s 17 SDG (Sustainable Development Goals).
Continue readingTech Insight: TinyML
AI related technologies have been around for decades. It is nothing new despite the recent hype that has elevated AI to the forefront of the “digital” discussion. Why are we excited about AI? It is becoming increasingly ubiquitous thanks to some pivotal advancements in how and where AI can be deployed. TinyML is one of these advancements that promises to bring AI to the tiniest of things.
Continue readingIndustry Insight: The IoT Pandemic Pivot
In the modern digital age, there has been no moment that has been as disruptive as what humanity is experiencing today amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. The IoT world has been shocked as the promise has been stripped away as enterprise budgets have withered as have their IoT ambitions. Yet, now more than ever, we need innovation. The IoT industry must adapt and rethink how they approach a very different market in a highly abnormal reality that may be with us for a while.
Continue readingTech Insight: Trust Platforms & Solutions
We are in a race against fake and the ever expanding cyber attack surface that is the Internet of pretty much everything. With the advent of DeepFakes and other artificial challenges to reality and truth, the fundamental fabric that binds our societies, our economies and our business and personal relationships is fast fraying be becoming undone. Trust will become a valuable commodity as we seek to de-risk ourselves from contrived data, dubious transactions, and questionable parties. The emergence of trust platforms are inevitable and essential for restoring and sustaining the fabrics of trust that underpin our lives and make our civilization viable.
Continue readingThe 5G Autonomous Edge: The Next Frontier of Digital Business Innovation
5G, AI, and the cloud are intersecting to unlock real-time autonomous capabilities at the edge. This evolution represents an inflection point for edge computing and a new frontier for business innovation and reinvention. Discover the potential of ubiquitous intelligence, edge cloud computing, and autonomous infrastructure to transform our world from the age of digital business to autonomous enterprise.
Continue reading