125 – Kathryn Hume and Nick Vermeer of Fast Forward Labs – Thinking Ahead -- Fashion Is Your Business

Kathryn Hume bio, Director of Sales and Marketing, and Nick Vermeer (bio), Research Engineer, at Fast Forward Labs (helping organizations accelerate their data science and machine intelligence capabilities), join hosts Pavan Bahl, Rob Sanchez and Marc Raco. Hume and Vermeer discuss the genesis of Fast Forward Labs, how innovation changed what the Labs mean from then to now, natural language generation, learning how much distance there is to go with Artificial Intelligence and language, machine learning vs. AI, difficulties with Amy on scheduling and other platforms, a bot to mimic Alexis Ohanian, how much sample size matters, and image recognition. A conversation on use cases in fashion businesses, CRMs, collaborative filtering, a focus on brick and mortar, using satellite data for cars in parking lots and credit card activity, RFID and privacy laws, and the surprising best way to block an RFID signal. Attention directing research, the next frontier vs. solving today's problems, how Fast Forward labs is like an outsourced R & D department and mentor to grow internally, purple unicorns, being "nerd best friends", and a mechanism for applied research. Off the Grid Questions cover a death-inspired poem, jeweler screwdrivers vs. a computer, Long Island corn, crop rotation bar talk, reactive illuminated dance costuming, thermochromic paints, and fast jet skiing.