I came across the bullwhip effect as a descriptor recently in discussions around the global chip shortage. Bullwhip effect is a concept that is well known in supply chain circles.
The bullwhip effect is also known as the Forrester effect. Disruption ripples back from the retailer, through the wholesaler, manufacturer, on to their suppliers and so on.
The usual causes for the effect are:
Demand forecast updating – this might be where a company might want to change their product mix to match consumer demand, if a product is very successful or grossly underperforms
Order batching – where members of the supply chain round up, or round down the quantity of orders. This happens with the periodic memory gluts or shortages affecting the technology sector
Price fluctuations – price discounts can encourage non-linear increases in purchases as it becomes worthwhile for customers to stock up, hedging against increased prices down the line. Oil reserves would be a classic example of this phenomenon
Rationing and gaming – buyers and sellers delivering over or under their order quantities. An example of this would be the actions of Enron in US electricity markets. This could be used in a positive way to promote changing the supply chain like renewable sources of electricity generation
What caused the global chip shortage that is driving the bullwhip effect?
There were three causes to the global chip shortage
Partial shutdown – The semiconductor industry went through a partial shutdown because of the COVID-19 epidemic. This meant that there was a smaller supply of chips.
Unusual increase in demand – Home working drove an increase in demand: increased sales in PCs, wi-fi routers, external hard drives, mice, keyboards, printers and so on. There was also a corresponding increase in home entertainment as consumers upgraded smart TVs, Apple and Roku set top boxes. This all coincided with the launch of the next generation of gaming consoles by Sony and Microsoft – which can usually drive a squeeze on their own
Supply chain disruption – A fire in Japan at Renesas Electronics. A trade war affecting Chinese semiconductor manufacturers. Freezing winter weather in Texas disrupting employees and their businesses. Now there is a drought in Taiwan affecting TSMC – the world’s largest semiconductor foundries
Digital golden bull at Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur & Chinese new year
The golden bull in question is on the digital screens of Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pavilion is an upscale shopping area and the animation was designed to tie into the year of the ox in the Chinese lunar calendar.
The golden bull is supposed to be auspicious and is seen to break through the coronavirus that affected 2020.
https://youtu.be/llFkwcAlFSk
Pavilion Kuala Lumpur
The golden bull execution is very similar to an installation done by a Chinese property developer that I found earlier this year. Both rely on corner screens and on understanding the viewing angle of pedestrian footfall streaming past the animation.
Following on from my post collating adverts celebrating Chinese new year last week, Radii China had some additional suggestions that came out after I had written my original post. Let’s hope that 2021 lives up to the auspicious promise of the golden bull.
Design & culture
The Royal Shakespeare Company is looking at using a virtual set for a performance based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. RSC’s Dream will be performed live from March 12 – 20, 2021. It shows how the arts are looking to adapt to a COVID world and experimenting with cutting edge technology.
RSC – Dream trailer
My friend Arun has released a COVID inspired track available for purchase from Underbelly Music on Bandcamp. Check out the accompanying video here.
Coffee Hype x Underbelly
This weekend I will be watching the latest Adam Curtis documentary series – BBC iPlayer – Cant Get You Out of My Head it’s the only thing that I bother watching on the BBC now.
Is Public Relations A ‘Bullshit Job’? | Holmes Report – If you find yourself in a company that doesn’t use public relations in a way that you find meaningful, and even occasionally inspiring, you’re in the wrong place. That doesn’t mean public relations consulting is a “bullshit job” but it may be an indication that you’re working for a shitty organization. – when I started in agency life I wondered if my new career was a mistake: was it a bullshit job? It didn’t help that I was working with a bunch of dot com startups and enterprise software companies.
I’d previously worked in industry formulating plastics and in the petrochemical industry. The chances are that if you drove a car from the early 1990s to the 2000s, I’d either helped develop part of your car, or helped provide the road surface that you drove on.
Agency life isn’t like that. It took me years to become comfortable on whether I had a bullshit job. That came as I started to see the difference to businesses that my work did. More related content here.
Folli Follie folly | FT Alphaville – interesting read, QCM used the companies own store finder function on their website – in order to determine that Folli Follie’s distribution wasn’t as healthy as claimed
Welcome to my April 2024 newsletter which marks my 9th issue. We managed to make it through the winter and the clocks moved forward allowing for lighter evenings in the northern hemisphere.
The number nine is full of symbolism in a good way. In Chinese culture it sounds similar to long-lasting. It was strongly associated with the mystical and powerful nature of the Chinese dragon. From the number of dragon types and children to the number of scales on the dragon – which were multiples of 9. You have nine channels in traditional Chinese medicine. In Norse mythology there are nine worlds and Odin the all-father hangs on the tree of life for 9 days to gain knowledge of the runes.
Social media-related cognitive dissonance
A couple of conversations with people, spurred me to write this next piece.
I know it’s obvious and common sense, but it needs to be said occasionally. This time last year, I was on a Zurich work trip, providing support to a teammate running a workshop for a client who viewed the agency as the least worst option. We did good work and built temporary rapport, we got insight about the wider client-side politics at play. It was the classic example of the complexities involved in agency life and Lord knows we already have enough internal politics in our own shops to deal with.
The photo I shared on Instagram at the time gave no clue to what was happening, serving as a reminder to consider the curated nature of social feeds when scrolling through.
New reader?
If this is the first newsletter, welcome! You can find my regular writings here and more about me here.
What my answers to Campaign’s a-list questions would look like.
Boutique e-tailers and why the multi-brand luxury retail sector has gone from boom to bust.
Very Ralph and other things – Ralph Lauren’s world building abilities and how others from a cancer patient or overseas migrant workers have bent the world to their needs, or made a new one.
Books that I have read.
There are a few books that I revisit and the March 1974 JWT London planning guide is one of them. In many respects it feels fresh and more articulate than more modern tomes.
Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism by Angela Zhang sounds exceptionally dry to the uninitiated. But if like me, you’ve worked on brands like Qualcomm, Huawei or GSK you realise how much of an impact China’s regulatory environment can have on your client’s success. Zhang breaks down the history of China’s antitrust regulatory environment, how it works within China’s power structures and how it differs from the US model. What becomes apparent is that Chinese power isn’t monolithic and that China is weaponising antitrust legislation for strategic and policy goals rather than consumer benefit. It is important for everything from technology to the millions of COVID deaths that happened in China due to a lack of effective vaccines. Zhang’s book won awards when it first came out in 2021, and is still valuable now given the relatively static US-China policy views. Given the recent changes in Hong Kong where she lives, we may not see as frank a book of its quality come out of Hong Kong academia again on this subject matter.
Van Horne and Riley’s Left of Bang was recommended by a friend who recently left military service. It codified and gave me a lexicon for describing observations of focus group dynamics and observation-based shopper marketing. Probably of bigger value to people more interested in the analytical side of behavioural science is the bibliography – which is extensive.
Things I have been inspired by.
Sustaining a sustainable brand
Kantar do a good webinar series called On Brand with Kantar. I got to watch one of them: Why consumers ignore brands’ sustainability efforts. Consumers are reticent to trust in brand’s sustainable efforts. Kantar’s recommendation is to stay the course and continue to demonstrate real sustainability. Kantar’s work complemented System 1’s Greenprint US-orientated sustainable advertising report. There is a UK-specific version as well with half a dozen ideas for marketers published in partnership with ITV.
Media platform trends
GWI released their 2024 Global Media trends report. GWI takes a survey based approach to understand consumer media behaviour.
Broadcast TV still commands the greatest share of total TV time, despite Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and a plethora of other streaming platforms from Criterion to Disney+.
Survival/horror players are most excited about gaming luxury collabs, whether or not luxury brands are equally excited about survival or horror gamers is a bigger question.
Games console ownership has halved in the past ten years. This surprised me given how many of my friends have a Switch or PlayStation 5. It probably explains why Microsoft is focusing on being a publisher rather than on platforms as well.
They focused exclusivity on internet advertising, which gives you a good idea on where they want the balance of media spend to go, rather than necessarily the right tool for the right job. Yes digital is very important, BUT, we live in a world were we are wrapped by and consume layers of digital and analogue media.
We can see from GWI data that this viewpoint is likely to be still excessively myopic in terms of media due to offline – online media linkages. This is likely to be even more so in Japan that still has a more robust traditional media industry.
Internet advertising reached a new high, despite being a couple of years after the Olympic games were hosted in Tokyo. (Media spend when a country hosts the olympics tends to be skewed that year upwards).
One thing I would flag is that this report is based on surveying people across the Japanese advertising industry and built on their responses. So there maybe some biases built into that process. Overall it’s a fascinating read.
Social media engagement benchmarks
RivalIQ published their 2024 Social Media Industry Engagement bench report, download it to get the full details. Three things that struck me straight away:
Macro-level decline across platforms on engagement rate, which matches the trends that Manson and Whatley outlined ten years ago in their Facebook Zero paper for Ogilvy Social.
If brands didn’t need enough reason already to reduce exposure to Twitter, the falling engagement rates on the platform add additional reasons. Overall video seemed to underperform on engagement compared to photos.
One thing leaped out to me in the industry verticals data, if you are looking to reach student age adults, why not consider collaborating with higher education institution social media accounts rather than influencers?
Shocking health outcomes
The Hidden Cost of Ageism | A Barrier to Innovation & Growth | Future Work – sparked a lot of discussion with its implications on workplace practices, particularly within the advertising sector. What was less discussed but more important was the implications of ageism related biases on healthcare treatment.
Under-treatment or Over-treatment: Older adults may receive less aggressive treatment options or are overtreated because of age-related biases, rather than based on individual health needs and preferences.
Dismissal of Concerns: Healthcare providers might dismiss older patients’ health issues as inevitable parts of ageing, potentially overlooking treatable conditions.
Age-Based Prioritisation: In some cases, age influences the allocation of healthcare resources, with younger individuals being prioritised over older ones, assuming they have more “life worth living.”
The Hidden Cost of Ageism | Future Work
MSNBC News in the US did a report on what it called a ‘Post-Roe underground’ echoing the underground railroads to free slaves in the Southern states and the Vietnam war era draft dodgers who escaped north to Canada. This time it is to help women access abortion pills or procedures in other states or Mexico.
MSNBC
My friend Parrus hosted a talk on World Health Day, more on that here, the key takeaway for me was not trying to replicate developed market solutions in developing markets. Instead think about how it could be reinvented. Thinking that could be extended beyond health care to consumer goods, telecoms and technology sectors as well.
Luxury market shake-up
Business of Fashion covered a US court case where two women brought a lawsuit against Hermès, alleging purchase of its sought-after Birkin bag is dependent on purchase of other products and is an “illegal tying arrangement” that violated US antitrust law.
Hermès is more vulnerable than other brands because it owns its retail stores. The case, if successful could have implications far beyond the luxury bag-maker. For instance, how Ford selected prospective owners for its GT-40 sports cars, or most Ferrari limited edition for that matter.
While we’re on the subject of luxury, LVMH are rerunning their INSIDE LVMH certificate which is invaluable for anyone who might work on a luxury brand now or in the future. More here.
Morizo
Toyota are on a tear at the moment. They correctly guessed that electric cars were too expensive at the moment and focused hybrids as a stepping stone to electric and hydrogen fuel cell production. They have also successfully use the passion for driving in their products and their marketing. The Toyota GR Yaris was a result of Chairman Akio Toyoda instructing engineers to make something sporty enough to win the World Rally Championship and affordable.
He also outed himself as a speed demon who went under the nom de plume of Morizo.
Quebec
For many English speakers one of the most dissonant experiences is being confronted by a language you can’t speak. It’s part of the reason why ireland managed to become the European base of companies like Alphabet and and Intel. So I was very impressed by this campaign by the Quebec government to attract visitors and inbound investment.
Things I have watched.
I watched Mr Inbetween series one in March and managed to work through series two and three this month. I couldn’t recommend them highly enough as a series. They just keep building on each other.
Over Easter, I revisited some old VHS tapes my parents still had and rediscovered the Christopher Walken science fiction horror film “Communion.” It epitomizes its era, with alien abduction narratives emerging during the Cold War and permeating popular culture from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” to “The X-Files,” tapering off after 9/11. “Communion” demonstrates how effective editing and minimal special effects can heighten tension and emotion. Despite the film’s incredulous premise, Walken delivers a fantastic performance.
“Modesty Blaise” is from a time when comic book adaptations were uncommon in cinemas. This 1966 adaptation of the 1960s comic strip shares stylistic similarities with “Barbarella” and stars a young Terence Stamp. I received a tape copy from a friend who was attending art college at the time. The depiction of the computer as a character with emotional reactions in the film feels contemporary, echoing the rise of virtual assistants like Siri and ChatGPT, despite being portrayed as a mainframe. It is interesting to contrast it with Spike Jonze’s movie Her made 50 years later.
Useful tools.
A lot of the tools this month have been inspired by my trusty Mac slowly dying and needing to get my new machine up and running before my old machine gave out.
Time Machine
Apple’s native backup software, Time Machine, serves as a personal sysadmin for home users. Regular backups are essential. If a crucial document disappears while you’re working on it, Time Machine, coupled with a Time Machine-enabled hard drive, allows you to retrieve earlier versions of the document, potentially saving your sanity in critical moments.
Microsoft Office
I prefer the one-off payment model over Office 365 services. I use Apple’s Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps instead of Outlook. While Office is available for just £100, which is reasonable considering its features, I still prefer Keynote over PowerPoint for creating presentations.
Superlist
Many of you may recall Wunderlist, which Microsoft acquired, but much of its original charm was lost in the transition to Microsoft To Do. Superlist is a reboot of Wunderlist by the original team, this time without Microsoft’s involvement. It’s available on iOS, macOS, and the web, catering to both individual and team task management needs.
https://youtu.be/2MzzbRhYlSA?si=04eBXH-MqKLpX2bN
ESET Home Security Essential
I used to rely on Kaspersky, and while I generally like their products, I have concerns about the potential influence of the Russian government. Therefore, I switched providers. ESET has a strong reputation and offers better Mac support than F-Secure. I can recommend their ESET HOME Security Essential package.
Amazon Basics laptop sleeve
I use a various bags depending on my destination and activities. Over the years, I’ve found that Amazon Basics brand laptop sleeves work well for my machines. They’re often among the cheapest options available and tend to outlast the computers they protect.
Laptop camera cover
The photo of Mark Zuckerberg’s laptop with tape covering the camera raised awareness about privacy. Webcam privacy covers, such as a sliver of plastic that slides across, are ideal as they allow your laptop to close fully. A pro tip is to use a red LED torch to clearly locate your camera when applying the stick-on cover.
Protective case and keyboard cover
I’m a big fan of clip-on polycarbonate shells to protect my laptop, as they provide a better surface for the stickers that personalize my machine over time. You don’t necessarily need a big-name case. The one I have came with a keyboard cover that works well. Anything that prevented Red Bull, coffee, or croissant flakes from getting under my keys is worth doing.
Screen protector film
The screen protector film provides great protection and is easy to apply and clean, even for beginners like me. I’ll update you if my opinion changes.
The sales pitch.
I have enjoyed working on projects for PRECISIONeffect and am now taking bookings for strategic engagements or discussions on permanent roles. Contact me here.
Ok this is the end of my April 2024 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other and enjoy the bank holiday.
Don’t forget to like, comment, share and subscribe!
Let me know if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues.
Over the weekend, Darya Dugina was blown up in a car bomb under the Toyota Landcruiser, her newsworthiness was down to her being the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin. News stories covering the bomb blast described Aleksandr Dugin as a political commentator close to the Putin regime. But that descriptor doesn’t really tell you that much.
Aleksandr Dugin is a political philosopher, published author and commentator. But most importantly he is the founder of the Eurasian Movement. This movement supports neo-Eurasianism. This means opposing and rolling back the Atlanticism of western nations and having Russia to rebuild its influence through annexations and alliances, underpinned by an ultranationalist and neo-fascist ideological logical world view that considers America and liberal values the scapegoat for every ill.
https://flic.kr/p/2nFvPwm
Dugin’s written work
Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russiapublished in 1997, outlined in how Aleksandr Dugin saw the future of Russia. it would form an alliance with Iran in the middle east. Reassert control over former Soviet republics, dismantling some completely like Ukraine and Georgia.
Dugin on re-engineering the world’s borders
It would look to address what it perceived as a threat from China, encouraging China to look south to its neighbours on the South China Sea rather than north to the former Qing empire lands now full of natural resources. This would allow China to solve the Straits of Malacca problem in its favour. The constraint to its move west would be India inside the Eurasian empire.
Aleksandr Dugin wanted the UK was to be isolated, as he viewed it as an aircraft carrier of the US, (echoes of Orwell’s 1984 in that viewpoint). Europe is to remade an anti-Atlanticist Franco-German bloc, that would affect a ‘Finlandisation of Europe’. Countries like Poland, would become a vassal like state of Russia. Orthodox countries would look towards Russia as the home of their mother church and cultural lodestone. Finland would be absorbed into Russia. Eventually, due to an over-reliance on Russian commodities, Aleksandr Dugin hoped to engineer an economic shock. Germany’s dependancy on Russian gas and oil would ultimately allow Russia to pick up the pieces in Europe and create an empire stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok
Aleksandr Dugin maybe at a distance from the Putin administration, but his political ideas have influenced Vladimir Putin, Russian foreign policy and military thinking.
Uneasy Euroasian detente
One can only see Russia’s relationship with China as reminiscent of the von Ribbentrop – Stalin detente of the interwar years, based purely on timing and mutual convenience.
Demographics
Aleksandr Dugin’s ideas are challenged by demographics. In the Middle East, Iran and Shai Muslim community are outnumbered by their Sunni counterparts. Russia’s own population growth is in terminal decline and not a match for China should it decide to go north. Which probably explains why Dugin tries to shoehorn India into part of the Eurasian empire.
The current war in Ukraine is as much a product of Aleksandr Dugin as it is of Vladimir Putin. President Putin is merely implementing Dugin’s vision slavishly. It is also interesting that the attempt on the life of Aleksandr Dugin seems to have given new ideological impetus to the invasion of Ukraine in Russia.
Is Dugin’s Eurasian ideological purity a threat to the Putin administration?
Marx and Lenin were dead by the time that Mao came along, so the Chinese communist party was never threatened by the legitimacy of their thought leaders with a higher authority ideologically pure voice. If they were alive today, it would be impossible for Xi Jingping to accuse Marx or Lenin of being guilty of hstorical nihilism. But Aleksandr Dugin exists outside of the Putin administration, he could be a natural rallying point of Putin’s support basis as the philosophical centre. He could be even considered a rival leader to Putin, drawing support from believers across the military intelligence and political classes. Making Aleksandr Dugin into a martyr just at the point when Russia has been suffering setbacks has some obvious benefits for the Putin administration and arguably less benefits for the Ukrainian government.
From Drugs to Corruption: The Growing Presence of Chinese Organized Crime in Latin America – In 2021, China’s policy banks — the China Development Bank (CDB) and Export-Import Bank (Exim) — made no loans to Latin America for the second consecutive year. Beijing is now essentially focused on financing Chinese companies to operate in the region. This shift in strategy and the resulting proliferation of Chinese companies in Latin America will increase the circulation of people and money that are no longer under the direct control of local governments. Based on current trends, Chinese criminal organizations will likely thrive in this new economic environment. Extortion, money laundering through front firms, and smuggling are already increasing, posing a severe threat to the population’s safety in the region. Worthwhile reading in conjunction with: Will Kenya’s next president follow through on China contract promises? | South China Morning Post – William Ruto campaigned on threats to deport illegal workers and make big contracts with Chinese companies public. But politics and the reality of government are two different things, observers say
Interesting dive into what’s causing the ‘great resignation’ and what it will mean for productivity
Culture
Guy Ritchie talks about Snatch – as a film, its interesting, but I won’t bother buying my own copy of Blu-Ray. A few things of note:
The direct influence of Sam Peckinpah’s western films on Snatch was not a connection that I saw coming at all
Ritchie talks about directing a Jason Statham film remotely via iPad, rather than being on set. I presume that this was done during COVID but still very interesting
His use of amateurs as actors because they were the right kind of characters
The folkloric nature of pub stories. The bit that chimed with me is how I knew of similar characters growing up at a similar time to Ritchie and some of them I knew personally. As I moved in more middle class circles my exposure to that world declined
Design
Big Car have a great documentary on the development of the Renault Scénic including an interview with Renault’s head of design at the time Patrick le Quément.
Economics
Why Mexico is missing its chance to profit from US-China decoupling | Financial Times – While foreign companies have borne the brunt of López Obrador’s attacks, the handful of big Mexican businesses that control large parts of the economy have been less affected. When the president wanted to tackle inflation, his government invited Mexican business leaders for private conversations to agree an informal pact limiting price rises on basic groceries. “It wasn’t a big sacrifice,” noted the owner of one large Mexican group. Mexico’s oligarchs have reinforced the impression of a cosy relationship with the president by making supportive statements in public and confining any criticism to conversations behind closed doors. “All the Mexican business leaders complain about Amlo,” says the chief executive of one big foreign company. “But when they meet him, they all appear afterwards in public saying how wonderful he is . . It’s a circle of collusion.”
I hadn’t realised that 8-track cartridges were used as a karaoke medium in Japan. I thought that they had gone from vinyl to cassette and then on to laser disc. Vinyl based karaoke is what gave use the Technics SL-1200 series of turntables, which is why the speed control on the right hand side of the deck was called a ‘pitch fader’.
The reason why these karaoke featured have a common design with the US 8-track cartridge players is likely down to the relatively high tooling costs to create the plastic mouldings. You can see the ’round polished marks in the recessed section where the inputs and outputs are that show a tools has been amended and quickly cleaned up.
Samuel Bickett had some really good insight into why Joshua Wong and several other people pled guilty to charges under the national security law : The Hong Kong 47 Committed No Crime…So Why Are So Many of Them Pleading Guilty? – Bickett points out that their actions were legal under the Basic Law article 52, but the National Security Law seems to supersede and reinterpret the basic law to anything the authorities want it to be.
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must resign under any of the following circumstances: When he or she loses the ability to discharge his or her duties as a result of serious illness or other reasons; When, after the Legislative Council is dissolved because he or she twice refuses to sign a bill passed by it, the new Legislative Council again passes by a two-thirds majority of all the members the original bill in dispute, but he or she still refuses to sign it; and When, after the Legislative Council is dissolved because it refuses to pass a budget or any other important bill, the new Legislative Council still refuses to pass the original bill in dispute.
At the moment, this will be of most interest to more political types. Now if you apply that interpretation to short sellers like Muddy Waters Research, punchy buy-side equity analysts or a brief that an advertising planner like me might write where a client is competing against a connected Hong Kong or Chinese company – then legal, reputable and ethical commercial activities can result in national security charges at the whim of the Hong Kong government. This is something that many multinational companies seem to be sleep walking into. Work for a multinational like a VPN provider? That looks like colluding with a foreign power, subversion or even terrorism under the National Security Law.
The use of the term “national security” is particularly objectionable because the concept has frequently been used in China to criminalise the peaceful exercise of the rights of expression and to persecute those with legitimate demands like democracy and human rights. Its inclusion raises fears of extension of such Mainland Chinese practices to Hong Kong especially in the light of Article 23 of the Basic Law.
Hong Kong already had substantive security laws in place since British rule. Notably the 1971 Criminal Ordinance which remains on the books.
Then there is the way that the judiciary in Hong Kong has been shaped by the National Security Law. No defendant has won any points with regards the law and judicial decisions have allowed the law to be used in a retrospective manner in concert with older colonial era laws.
A film produced by a German film crew in 1966 to try and bring to life Japanese life for a European audience. I am sure that some of the manufacturing scenes are b-roll footage, but it is fascinating nonetheless. There is a style to the car and light truck designs which is a lovely aesthetic.
Vintage Studio 1 tracks mixed by Japanese sound system veterans Mighty Crown
1/ Chinese consumers overstretched themselves on luxury goods
2/ China is going through straitened financial times, 6 percent GDP growth feels like zero growth in developed markets. I have heard growth being described as being closer to 3 percent. Government control and intervention means that you won’t see the kind of collapse you saw in the west during 2008 and 2009 and internal security would stomp all over any ‘Occupy Wall Street’ analogue. Security forces are already suppressing depositors who have lost their savings in regional banks. There are also a lot of investors in property businesses: China Evergrande Shares Are Worthless, Top Fund Manager Says
Russia Holding Its Arms Expo With Weapons That May Be A ‘Hard Sell’ Now. | SOFREP – it is interesting that the Russians took steps to make sure the captured American gear on display was spotlessly clean, right down to the tyre paint. Who is to say that some of the gear came in by being bought or traded with the Taliban rather than from the Ukraine battlefield? I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia did a ‘homage’ to the M777. Russia has a wealth of experience in titanium fabrication from submarine hulls to aircraft, so the M777 carriage shouldn’t be that hard. The challenge would be the digital tools used to facilitate a higher degree of accuracy.
ViewSonic lays out plans for education metaverse – ViewSonic, which marks its 35th year of establishment in 2022, has been actively promoting digital transformation in recent years, shifting from a hardware company to a solutions company. Looking towards the future, company chairman James Chu has laid out the key development strategy of “ecosystem as a service,” announcing the Universe education metaverse software. Chu pointed out that ViewSonic has transformed in response to the rapidly changing environment. The company will focus on assisting the digital transformation of the education market. In the third quarter of 2021, ViewSonic’s electronic whiteboard was already no.1 in global market share, Chu said. Its Universe education metaverse software aims to level up the traditional 2D digital education into a 3D interactive virtual education platform. The goal is to solve the lack of interactivity and participation and make online education feel as if it is in-person. The proposed “ecosystem as a service” is about the integration of hardware, software and service, it said. Regarding software and hardware, ViewSonic will integrate its ViewBoard, a smart interactive electronic whiteboard, with myViewBoard, a digital teaching platform, to provide a complete education technology solution.
