What does the Tysons of 2050 look like?
Tysons 2050, an event hosted by the Tysons Regional Chamber of Commerce yesterday at the Tysons Hilton (7920 Jones Branch Drive), brought technology experts across the region together to discuss how trends in cyber-security and AI will impact Tysons.
Rodney Lusk, director of National Marketing for Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, says the County expects 200,000 jobs in the Tysons area and 100,000 residents by 2050.
This growth will continue to spur development, which is well underway in various corners of Tysons. The View, a 3 million-square-foot mixed-use building planned for Tysons, is planned to be 600 feet tall, dwarfing the 470-foot Capital One Tower that currently claims the title of tallest in the region.
As Tysons moves forward, Lusk says there are certain elements beyond just office space and retail needed to make the area more than just a commuter hub. For instance, Lusk said, Tysons will need to have at least two performing arts centers in the area and a research university.
Paul McNeal, the co-founder of CryptoMarket360, said the future Tysons will look like something out of science-fiction.
“If you’ve seen Minority Report or Demolition Man,” said McNeal, “that’s where Tysons is headed in 2050.”
McNeal envisions technology driving Tysons towards a “frictionless society” with interactive ads based on user data and self-driving cars.
But as Tysons moves into the future, one of the main discussions centered on how new technology will also present challenges and opportunities for Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS).
“The student to teacher ratio is going to be 200 to one,” said George Strawn, former National Science Foundation CIO. “But that’s carbon-based teachers. Everyone will have their own silicon tutor.”
Not everyone who spoke saw the future so starkly different as today.
Tarun Upaday, founder of Gallop.ai, said that the artificial intelligence in classrooms will be used more to complement the teachers rather than replace them. Upaday pointed to the current status of chess championships, where the top teams are not brilliant chess players or supercomputers, but fusions of the two that beat solely computers or solely human teams every time.
Upaday also said the work of Pindar Van Arman, whose machine artists were recently on display at Tysons Corner Center, represented what man and machine can accomplish working in harmony.
Falls Church-based education specialist Tosin Adetoro said artificial intelligence can also be used to support student populations that often fall through the cracks of the education system. In particular, Adetoro said personalized AIs have been found to be very helpful for students on the autism spectrum.
Jay Garant, director of Business and Community Partnerships at FCPS, emphasized that as valuable an asset as AI will be, it can’t replace teachers. As students begin to spend more and more of their lives staring at their phone screens, Garant said schools will be critical in teaching empathy.
“When kids begin to fail, they are more likely to [positively interact] with a human than anything else,” said Garant. “That won’t go away.”
The Tysons Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Tysons 2050 event tomorrow (Wednesday) will take a look at the challenges and opportunities that come with the title “America’s Next Great City.”
The second annual event, held at the at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner (7920 Jones Branch Drive), features discussions of emerging social and technological trends with a focus on how they will affect Tysons over the next 30 years.
The opening keynote speakers are Daniel Hoffman, a former station chief with the CIA, and Rodney Lusk, coordinator of the national marketing team for the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.
The event will run from 4-8 p.m. Panels are scheduled to cover issues like cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and education, with speakers from both national and local organizations. In addition to panels, an expo will be taking place throughout the event, allowing attendees to try out the futuristic technology.
Registration for Tysons 2050 is $50 for Chamber members and $75 for non-members. Pre-registration for the event closed last night, but on-site registration is available at an additional $10 fee.
Photo via Facebook
(Updated at 9 p.m.) Some 425 people attended today’s Social Media Week Fairfax event in Tysons, absorbing insights and ideas for anyone working in social media, marketing or startups.
The event, hosted by Fairfax County Economic Development Authority at Capital One headquarters, was a one-day convention of panels and networking that primarily focused on how businesses, large and small, engage on social media.
The keynote speaker and celebrity for the PR world was Judy Smith, a crisis management expert and the inspiration for the show Scandal. The biggest points Smith highlighted were speed and tone of responses to calamity.
“There’s an appreciation of mistakes when you embrace it and you own it,” said Smith.
Smith said organizations often wait more — sometimes much more — than 45 minutes before responding to an incident, by which time public opinion has already started to form.
One cause, according to Smith, is that companies can get tangled up in communications between different departments. Companies can also be slow to admit the whole truth, while Smith says the best answer is usually just to let all of the bad news come out at once like tearing off a Band-aid.
“You also have to pick the best time and vehicle to respond,” said Smith. “There was a CEO who apologized in 15 posts on Twitter. Given the seriousness of the matter, I would not have responded to that on Twitter. If a food company has a massive recall where people are sick or dying, I wouldn’t tweet ‘sorry about the bad food.'”
Smith said part of working in crisis management is working on controlling the narrative. In her own life, when the producers on Scandal approached her about adding in an intimate relationship between her character and the President, Smith said she got on the phone with President George H.W. Bush, for whom she had worked as a press secretary, to let him know.
Smith said when President Bush called her back and left a voicemail, joking that “you called me” and “you left me,” she fired back that he couldn’t make jokes about that.
“If you don’t follow these talking points,” Smith recalled telling Bush, “I will call Barbara.”
These days, Smith said things are moving faster in social media, saying her largest concern is that the population seems to have increasing difficulty discerning fact from fiction.
“One year ago, there was something I was looking at on social media and it was trending too fast,” Smith said. “When my team checked, it was because the other side had hired two bot companies to tweet about it. That’s how it went from zero to five million tweets in two minutes.”
Despite the prevalence of untruth on social media, Amanda Waas and Tammy Abraham from National Geographic emphasized the importance of being genuine.
“People can see right through anything on social media,” said Tammy Abraham. “If you’re not authentic, if it doesn’t feel true, everyone knows it.”
To this end, Abraham said that the National Geographic’s Instagram account is handled almost exclusively by photographers in the field. There are general guidelines, but Abraham said letting photojournalists have unfiltered access to the social media has helped build a following for the brand.
This extends to working with sponsored content as well.
“We’re not just going to post an ad,” said Waas. “Even for branded content, it needs to follow certain guidelines.”
“We have to find a common place to tell an authentic story,” said Abraham. “We can’t tap into an authentic story without something meaningful to tell.”
Alarm.com, a Tysons-based home protection system, started as one of the pioneers of remote home security management. Today the company is fighting to hold its own in a market becoming increasingly saturated with smart home technology.
The company was started in 2000 as an innovation project within MicroStrategy, a business intelligence company based in Tysons. Matthew Zartman, the company’s director of communications, said Alarm.com has benefited from the technology talent pool in the Washington, D.C. area and that Tysons serves as a good central office location for employees living throughout the region.
Part of the company’s core model has been working with authorized dealers to install the products in client’s homes.
“The smart home can be pretty complicated and daunting to the typical consumer,” said Zartman. “There are a ton of options out there, and consumers want help understanding how they can get value from this new technology, and how they can get it installed and working properly.”
Investor’s Business Daily reported that the company took a stock market hit as a result of worries about competition from Amazon and Google’s smart home technology. Both companies offer smart home technology that customers self-install, while Alarm.com distributes its product through home security dealers.
“They are smart home security experts,” said Zartman. “They can provide advice for getting the right system, and they can provide installation and ongoing support. We believe that the combination of our solutions and our service provider partners’ expertise has been key to driving the mass market adoption of smart home technology.”
While smart home technology often focuses on entertainment and other home amenities, Alarm.com’s technology has remained focused on security. Recent moves into business protection and international coverage could help the company carve out a new niche.
In April this year, Alarm.com announced that it would be adding a new service for protecting small and medium-size businesses. Alarm.com for Business offers intelligent intrusion detection, video surveillance, access control and energy management
The company has also been making moves internationally. Alarm.com announced on Aug. 2 it was partnering with European insurance provider Aviva to offer Alarm.com coverage under the banner of Aviva Smart Home.
Police Release Sketch of Vienna Robbery Suspect — Fairfax County Police have released a sketch of the suspect who robbed a man at gunpoint on Oct. 6 along path to the Vienna Metro station. [Facebook]
Rapid Pace of Tysons Development — The pace of development in Tysons is impressing even seasoned local business people. At a recent Greater McLean Chamber of Commerce breakfast, the gathered crowd was wowed by a slide showing buildings now under construction and approved developments in Tysons. [InsideNova]
Local Firms Place High on Fortune List — From the most recent FCEDA E-Bird: “Hilton and Mars Inc. are among the top three places to work — not just in Fairfax County but in the world according to Fortune.com. San Francisco-based Salesforce, Tysons Corner-based Hilton and McLean-based Mars ranked 1-2-3 based on employee surveys conducted by Fortune partner Great Place to Work around the world. Companies racked up points based on respect, fairness, pride, camaraderie, and trust.” [Fortune]
FCPS Digital Citizenship Week — “This week is Digital Citizenship Week in our county schools and it’s important for parents/guardians to help children become safe, ethical, responsible and respectful digital citizens.” [Fairfax County]
Cvent Makes Big Acquisition — Tysons-based event tech company Cvent has acquired D.C.-based event and venue planning startup Social Tables for, reportedly, more than $100 million. [Washington Business Journal]
Reminder: Social Media Week Fairfax Tomorrow — Social Media Week Fairfax, featuring a number of marquee speakers including Judy Smith of Scandal fame, will be taking place tomorrow (Thursday) from 8 a.m.-1 p.m. at Capital One HQ in Tysons. A complete agenda is available here.
The tech retail store b8ta in Tysons Corner Center will be one of seven locations nationwide to exhibit a new suite of Google hardware products, including the Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL.
The Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are new phones by Google unveiled on Oct. 9 at an event in New York. Also unveiled was the Pixel Stand, a wireless charger, the Pixel Slate, a high-end tablet device, and Home Hub, an assistant that tracks day to day information like calendar events and appointments.
B8ta stores allow visitors to test out the products in a space designed to feel like a home setting. The products will be coming to b8ta stores in Texas, California, New Jersey and Arizona, as originally reported by Digital Trends. The Tysons Corner Center location is the only spot in Virginia to let users test out the new hardware before it goes on sale.
The new hardware will be available starting next Thursday (Oct. 18). The b8ta store is on the second floor of Tysons Corner Center, near the Bloomingdales.
Photo via b8ta
Columbus Day in Fairfax County — Fairfax County government offices and schools will be closed and the Fairfax Connector will operate on a modified holiday schedule due to the Columbus Day holiday. Vienna Town Hall will also be closed. [Fairfax County, Fairfax Connector, Twitter]
Vienna Fund Raises Quarter Billion — Vienna-based Aldrich Capital Partners “has spent three years proving out its entrepreneur-driven investment thesis — and it just closed a $256 million outside fund to bring it to life.” [Washington Business Journal]
Tysons Company Makes Another Acquisition — “DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC), the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, today announced the acquisition of argodesign, a nationally known product design consultancy based in Austin, TX.” [Business Wire, Fast Company]
New Coworking Space Coming to Tysons — “Short for the Brandywine Experience, the first Bex is set to open soon from ground-floor space at 8260 Greensboro Drive in Tysons, a nondescript, seven-story office building. It’s not big, at about 6,300 square feet, but Brandywine hopes it will have an outsized impact on occupancy rates across its Northern Virginia portfolio.” [Washington Business Journal]
Reminder: Voter Registration Deadline Approaching — “The deadline to update your voter registration information and register to vote is Monday, Oct. 15, for the upcoming Nov. 6 general election. There are 754,493 registered voters in Fairfax County, including 695,925 active registered voters.” [Fairfax County]
No wallet? No problem.
With Yombu, everything from financial transactions to gym access is at your fingertip. Now, this Tysons company is starting to branch out across the country.
Yombu is a tech startup based out of MakeOffices in Tysons. The company lets customers of a business confirm their identity for something like purchasing an item or signing into a membership with only a fingerprint scan.
“We want to be the way people pay and the way people engage so you don’t need anything other than you,” said Joe Falit, one of the two co-founders of Yombu.
Yombu started in Northern Virginia, but has since expanded into D.C. and Maryland. Falit said the company is focused on gradually building into more cities and building locally-centered networks.
Yombu’s new deal with gym software company Motionsoft means that the company is about to receive a major boost in users as it spreads to 26 gyms across the country.
Yombu started one year ago with zero users. Today, they are at 15,000, which is 5,000 more than their initial goal for 2018.
The company expands its user-base through two types of markets.
The first is through merchants or “quick-serve” transactions, like coffee shops or dry cleaners. In a location like this, a customer can authenticate their fingerprint once as they pay with a card, and the card will be linked with that print. Things like rewards traditionally tracked through punch cards can also be tracked through Yombu.
Getting merchants on board can be difficult. Falit said many they talk to initially say that credits cards work fast enough. But once shown how much faster lines can move and how much more consistent the rewards programs can be with a fingerprint scan, they usually sign up.
The second type of market is membership. Yombu is used to sign in or out of a membership area, like a gym, and while Falit said the company started with mostly quick-serve transactions, they’re finding membership to be the much more lucrative use of the technology.
“If you’re a gym and you now use Yombu to have membership through finger, you’re basically making everyone sign up,” said Falit. “We see these memberships as hubs. At coffee shops, we might get 20 percent of people there to sign up. But at the gym, we get 100 percent of people to sign up.”
As Yombu prepares to launch in Philadelphia soon and in gyms across the country, back at home in Tysons the program is starting to become more and more commonplace.
Yombu is currently being used in 56 locations throughout the D.C. area — 30 merchant locations and 26 gyms. On one rainy day along a few weeks ago, Falit watched as 325 new users signed up for the program as they flocked into coffee shops throughout the region, all of them paying for their coffee with a single touch.
Photo via Yombu
Today, information technology departments are largely reactive — called to fix problems after they happen. But the Tysons startup TaskFit.io has developed artificial intelligence tech that, if it catches on, could supplement if not replace the help desk entirely.
TaskFit.io is an IT automation software platform that can be installed onto a laptop, server, or edge device (like routers) to gather metrics on that device and help fix it when an issue occurs.
TaskFit.io’s AI programs are constantly collecting data as the system is running and adapting to meet problems that come up. Problems can be identified and remedied before the user even recognizes that one exists.
“When you have an issue with your laptop, you call support,” said Tim Marcinowski, co-founder of TaskFit.io. “Your internet goes down and you’re on the phone. We’re the first line of defense for support for organizations through our agents, which are AI that can learn based on data we collect and take action before the user has to report it to support.”
Marcinowski said that for many companies, IT is outsourced. This can work for a smaller company just getting started, but Macinowski said problem comes when the companies start to expand and starts to outgrow their IT service.
“There’s a number you can point to [in each business], where if they bring on X amount of customers, they need X amount of people supporting those activities,” said Marcinowski.
TaskFit.io is currently a small company, based in the Tysons WeWork coworking space. Marcinowski and co-founder Peter Fraedrich run the technical side of the company, along with two advisors and three or four contractors.
“We haven’t taken any investments and have been gaining revenue since month one,” said Marcinowski. “We started on our own with our own money and have been doing okay for right now. Eventually we will raise early stage capital within the year.”
Two started in April with $90,000 of the two founders’ own money. The company has $40,000 in recurring annual revenue, according to Marcinowski, who hopes to push that to $100,000 by the end of the year.
Currently, TaskFit.io has three paying customers and four pilot projects. The pilot projects are unpaid but allow the company to gain insights into the program working in action and allow them to continue developing abilities.
“These companies that are early adopters got free software,” said Marcinowski, “but we’re going to bug you and ask you a lot of questions. Things may break, but we’ll work to get them fixed.”
Like many startups, TaskFit.io has pivoted its focus over time. Early on, Marcinowski says they were originally interested in competing with Google and Amazon to create the first real-time machine learning platform. That evolved into the company’s current platform, but even then product development has been an iterative process of shifting priorities and tough decisions.
According to Marcinowski, what managers said they really wanted was a tech tool to help them figure out what their employees were doing. While this could have been a profitable avenue, it didn’t fit with the founders’ vision for the company.
“We really didn’t want to be the watchdog of employees,” said Marcinowski. “We didn’t want to be that at all, and we didn’t care how much money we made. We aren’t used car salesmen, we wanted to build software that solves problems.”
Photo via TaskFit.io
The Women in Technology organization is hosting its fall job fair tomorrow (Wednesday) in Tysons.
Both men and women are encouraged to attend and meet recruiters. The event is free but online registration is required and will allow exhibitors to view the applicant’s resume. Exhibitor registration for the event has been closed, but potential exhibitors are encouraged to check later for the spring job fair.
Exhibitors at the job fair range from large corporations like Sony and Amazon to organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency. A full list of exhibitors can be viewed here.
The event runs from 4-7 p.m. at Valo Park — the former Gannett headquarters at 7950 Jones Branch Drive.
