I am sitting in a meeting room at 50th-ish floor, of a new high rise commercial building by the Chicago River, overlooking the Magnificent Mile, taking in the handsome architecture, the skyline, and picturing when the Chicago River turns neon green at St. Patrick day…this has got to be the BEST spot…I am here for a full day external Executive Woman Leadership Workshop. I am passionate about the topic, cultivating the next generation of female leaders, but at the same time I am annoyed – why we are still discussing gender equality in the 21st century…so my mind wonders and parks at the balcony of London House rooftop….and spins into the world of technology that I am involved with at work – Machine Learning, -Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Predictive Analytics, etc. BUT, outside of work, does my personal life get a notch of improvement because of digital world? I ponder…
- I badly want the “Uber Kids”share-drive or driverless car that could transport my nanny and my 1 year old to the Museum of Science and Industry to catch the morning story time at the Idea Factory exhibit.
- How about “Mama Assistant” apps, with a real and intelligent person based in Calcutta handling all your to-do? This is already working at corporate level. I want someone I could outsource all the convoluted tasks, such as doctor appointments to sync up my work schedule, and with my husband’s, following up medical record transfer, birthday party supply and costume research and order, registering park district summer camp when it opens up at midnight?!
- “A Learning Watch Derived from Speech Analytics” for toddlers. Not those GPS enabled watch, but a watch that kiddos could wear at school – record, process, analyze and summarize what is new that my kid has learned today, in a visualized dashboard, and then spit out a 15-minute recommended at-home exercise that is fun enough for parents and kiddos to do together. Don’t we all want to be a fly on the wall in our kiddo’s classroom? Supporting the kiddos to learn and learn fast, but not too much non-sense homework to bring home? Big data and speech mining should do the trick, and create a daily activity plan.
- IoT (Internet of Things) Lululemon Yoga Pants to send me a text alert during the lunch hour…even if I’ve checked into the gym this morning, that extra basket of truffle fries I am digesting are NOT helping my fitness goal that I’ve set up as a New Year resolution.
- Personalized Self-Learning Books Club for toddlers – my husband and I have a lot of disagreement what are fun vs. silly books for our kids to read. Piles of books also taking up space for sure. “Now, Tiri, please show me the most popular book published this month for the 3-year olds? And Tiri, please queue up a fun Chinese written book illustrated by Japanese cartoonist that the smartest kids in China are reading now…” The Next Generation of the smart Augmented Reality TV Screen displays one book in the air, and have another queue up for me to consume together with my kids after dinner.
And who still needs to save up for College Funds instead of Vacation Funds? As we could beam Stanford Professors to our living room for $59/month!
- Dannie, the Robot, to collect and organize all the toys, since every piece is connected with IoT. Some toys belong to the 3rd floor unicorn toy bin, and some could just go directly to recycle bins. And Dannie knows exactly the pieces which should be recycled according to the usage and frequency and monetary statistics, so there won’t be any tears, but if my 3-year old persistently asks for the toy that is recycled, there is still a 2-day window to “track my toy” before it was completely compressed.
- For a professional mom, a nicely done make up is a luxury, a 60 minutes painting my face like those teenagers on Youtube is impossible, however, that doesn’t mean I don’t want the outcome of it. A “3-D Printing Make-Up MASK”comes handy. I personalize based upon my skin tone, determine the make up trend from the apps, then pick up the options of daytime, afterwork cocktail, boardroom look and opera night out, etc…3-D printing mixes the colors that suits, I place the mask into my face, one…two….three….voila. I am rocking Channel Spring Nude.
- Forget about the game. The Voice Activated Virtual Reality Time Bomb is what every parent wants. “Maia, get out of the pool, it is towel time, I am counting to THREE….one…two…three…bomb!!” A virtual bomb projects out of my watch and enough to get my 3 years old jumping out of the pool 🙂
- In the end, we all need a REAL family vacation — can a vacation be streamlined, enjoyable, educational, sufficient family bond, but not gaining tons of weights by staying at an all-inclusive? What I really want is a Riviera Maya vacation, door-to-door less than 6 hours, as now we have micro-chips injected into our arms, no more security and immigration lines. After a gluten-free breakfast, everyone is set off to their respectively 2 hours emerging program – a kid’s club in Spanish emerging play and learn, a yoga class at the beach finishing with fresh cut coconut for me, and my husband goes to hit tennis balls, every 100 swing, he gets one shot of Anejo tequila. Then we recoup for 2nd breakfast (like real Mexicans do-), after that, our family diving instructor is waiting for us by the pool with adult and child size tanks and gear, my husband and I are ready for a refresher course, and girls are following diving class lesson #1. Now we are set to go for a diving excursion. After tanks are running low, on the boat returning to the shore, our eco-diving watch detects a “matured” marlin, and after fighting for half an hour, a 10 ft marlin is on board. Marlin scrambled eggs + marlin steak for lunch at 3pm. After lunch, everybody naps. We need energy for a sunset sailing with one meal so that my watch stops counting calories 🙂
“Lottie, you are Group 2 to discuss what could employer do to retain female talents? ” the workshop instructor is standing right next to me.
Life is GOOD in the enhanced DIGITAL world.
Lottie + 2 