Three months go by quick. In that time, I, your humble Content Manager, have had the chance to work with some incredibly bright people. It was intimidating at first: coming into work every morning and seeing whiteboards covered in arcane equations and incomprehensible diagrams. I knew what we did in principle when I joined Acerta--we're using AI to help automakers get products to market faster and with fewer defects--but I certainly didn't understand what that actually involves. Over the past three months, I've had crash courses in automotive manufacturing, cloud migration, data quality, fleet maintenance, machine learning, software internships, and statistical process control, among other things.

Making connections with digital-tech small fry is one of the most important things that automakers and their suppliers can do these days. Whether it's accessing big-data algorithms or discovering the best maker of geofencing software, auto-industry giants must suck up innovation and talent at the leading edge and sometimes in the smallest increments to stand a chance of competing with their natural rivals and with Silicon Valley. That's the thinking behind the planned launch in January of an organized networking platform as part of AutoMobili-D, the arm of the North American International Auto Show that is devoted to discussions of mobility technology and services and to helping players big and small make those crucial connections. At the first AutoMobili-D last January, plenty of sparks flew between worthy startups and big companies lifting the hood on their ideas, their technologies, their personnel and their attitudes. Most of those connections were made relatively serendipitously, as participants demonstrated their wares in the AutoMobili-D exhibit space and reps huddled throughout Cobo Hall where NAIAS was held.