Artistic soul with a scientific mind - Bonnie D. Graham

Intro 0:00
Welcome to the ‘How We Innovate’ podcast presented by Applandeo hosted by me, Wiola and my co-host, Bryan. On this podcast, we talk with leading innovators, pull back the curtain on their industry, and get to know how they use technology to achieve success, as well as share the story behind them and their businesses.

Host – Wiola 0:24
On today’s episode, we have Bonnie D. Graham. There are so many words to describe Bonnie, I don’t even know where to begin. She’s a technologist, futurist, artist, aspiring drummer and the stand up comedian. She’s a radio and podcast creator, producer and moderator. And she’s currently doing a podcast – Technology Revolution: The Future of Now. Bonnie, when do you find time to do all of this?

Guest – Bonnie 0:52
Time is my friend because I make the time Wiola. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m thrilled to be here. I’m very honored that you have asked me to share my life, my technology, futurist, whatever, whatever is you want to focus on. I’m very honored that you’ve asked me to be with you and Bryan today and thank you to the Applandeo team for for the invitation. I find time for the things that bring joy to my life. And the reason I get up every day is for the privilege of speaking to really smart people about topics like technology. So I make time and I will tell you that a couple of years ago, pre-COVID I was producing and hosting 12 different radio series in a year and doing about 250 live shows. And that’s prep calls. That’s preparation. That’s writing, that’s research. And I loved it because this is what I found is my that’s my why my why my why. And I didn’t find it until a couple of years ago I’ve met other wise in my life before that. But talking to people on live I call it radio you call it podcast. To me it’s still radio happens to be without wires, and it’s on a box on your desk and nobody’s plugged into a wall somewhere. Well, maybe you’re not capable. But anyway, the point is, this is what I love to do. And so I make the time, there’s your answer.

Host – Wiola 2:15
Amazing. So yes, as we know, the total number of your radio podcast series you’ve created, produced hosted so far is 55?

Host – Bryan 2:27
I think is 55. I stopped counting at 51. And I can’t keep track. But I’m currently debuting two brand new series that we’re now in the month of July 2022. And one is starting live next Tuesday and one I just debuted last week. And I have some more I’ll call it irons in the fire some potential prospective clients I’m working with. I’m hired and engaged by companies around the world to create develop coach and mostly moderating hosts their radio shows their podcast. So I do have a couple of the pipeline has a couple of companies in there. And there could be more shows launching this year. I’m very open. Hint, hint. Okay.

Host – Wiola 3:10
Yeah. Well, let’s start with the basic questions. So where is your interest in technology come from?

Host – Bryan 3:20
My interest in technology, very interesting question. I was late in life to come to the workforce. I didn’t get my first job till I was in my late 20s. I was a mom. I was a full time wife and mom for years. And I won’t go into all the personal details but I ended up being a young, divorced wife and mom. And I realized that I needed to get a profession. I had a degree a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude, if I can brag in psychology, I was very strong in math all my during all my training, I was on the math team in junior high school and did competitive, high in math solving and all that good stuff. And I was in the band and played flute and I sewed my own clothes, and I did all kinds of things. Anyway, the point is that I needed to do something. And it’s very interesting. I was in Oregon, and my parents, my family where I grew up in New York. And I said to them, I don’t know what I’m going to do but I gotta find a way to support my two kids because there’s nothing coming in right now. And they sent me a stack of brochures from different careers, seriously in the mail. We’re talking before maybe both of you were born. I hate to say that, but it’s probably true. So they sent me a stack of brochures, oh, there was a radiology technologist. My dad was a radiologist and MD, there was all kinds of support types of jobs. And one brochure stood out and it said: ‘computer programmer’, and I said, Well, what in the world is that? What is that? And I talked to a couple people I knew this was Eugene, Oregon, the running capital of the world. It used to be called way on the West Coast. And they said, Well, you’ve got a bachelor’s degree there’s a community College and I didn’t even have a car at that point they said, you could take a bus ride, two buses will take you to this community college go find out because they have a course there. And I went to the college, and I said: ‘Hi, my name is Bonnie, I come from New York, I arrived here about a year ago, I, I need to find a profession that will let me earn money to support myself and my children. And this computer technology thing looks interesting.’ And they said: ‘Well, here’s what we have to tell you. The class is completely full. However, however, within two weeks, half the people will drop out, because they have no idea what it’s about, and they won’t want to do it. So you come and you stand in the back of the room and you find a chair into the introduction to programming and operations. And we guarantee in two weeks, there will be a seat for you.’ So I went to the class every day, three times a week for two weeks. And in the third week, there was hardly anybody left in the room. And I was one of those people and they said now you can sign up and take this is a way I remember it. Now you can sign up and take the class. Well, I took the course it was two years, I was allowed to apply all my bachelor’s degree credits. I aced every class, every homework assignment, every test 4.0 I don’t know if that’s how education works for you, but it was a 4.0 GPA. My class was comprised of people who had tried architecture school and didn’t like it, who had tried medical school and didn’t like it, who had tried law school and didn’t like it. Me, a mom with a psychology degree had never done anything with my degree. We weren’t we weren’t dropouts, we were what’s next people I like I like that better. We were what’s next. And I have to tell you, it was exciting. It was exhilarating. My brain was on fire. I learned to write code, I learned about five different programming languages. I learned how I was in the computer operations room, I learned how to how to run systems, I will tell you that back in the day, a computer room was like the size of a small warehouse. And the data was on a disk pack that was this big, I’m holding my hands up to show something circular that almost looked like a flying saucer, it was about 18 inches in diameter. And it was this thick, and it had all kinds of stuff inside with a handle. And I had to climb up on a stool to put it into the disk drive to launch it. And then you had job control language. And we were keep punching our code on Hollerith 80 column cards. And anyway, the point was that I became thrilled with the idea of taking nothing. And being told we need this report, we need this program to do some some end result. And you’re going to write the code. We even learn to create our own compiler with our own, Bryan, our own language, we had a made up language, we’ve been teams of three, and we wrote our own nonsense language. And we actually used it to write programs. So that’s when I became thrilled. And the kicker is that a job opened running a community college statewide reporting system at that college, and I applied for it. And they hired me right out of school. That’s when I walked in to my first job. I don’t know what your role was. And I said, ‘Oh, do I have to stay till five because I had never worked in an office before.’ In two years, my manager left to go move to some other job in California. And they said: ‘Well, you know, this system, why don’t you take it over?’ And I was running the entire statewide Community College reporting system from my job and and I moved on from there. So that’s how my love of technology happened. It was It started with a brochure. It started with a class and all of a sudden I’m thinking it was like jumping for joy every time a program worked. It was that exciting.

Yeah, I think maybe it’s a piggyback off something you talked about. Right? So you always felt like what’s next? Right? So for you, you come from radio, right? And we’ve come to, podcasting is the new radio. Right? So did you kind of see that trend early that you know, podcasting was going to be the new thing? Or did it kind of come by surprise that you know, this is it.

This is so many layers later in my career, Bryan. I went on from programming to hiring people to do a turnkey banking operation for a correspondent bank in New York. And then I went on to run a marketing team for a large commercial bank in Manhattan. And then I went on to run a marketing team, a whole marketing production for a large realty company, real real estate. And I got into broadcasting very, very, very by mistake, because somebody when I was doing stand up comedy, I’m going to wrap this thread up for you, Bryan and Wioletta. Somebody heard me that I had done stand up comedy because I wrote an article for a local newspaper where I was living in Long Island, New York. And I said: ‘I’m doing stand up comedy’, and they published it in the local newspaper. And somebody heard about me and said: ‘Oh, we have a local TV station here, a public access station, come and be a guest on this person’s show.’ And I went and began she said, Well, the Stand up comedy is an art form. And she put me on her show. And I said, What is this? And they said, This is access TV. I said, it’s eight blocks from my house. I didn’t I didn’t know how come I didn’t know. I said, I want to do a show. This is how I got into media. Long story, Bryan. And I went, they said, go across the street, and they’ll tell you a nice, what do I do? And they said, well, we’ll treat you give us $150 We’ll train you how to do production and how to kind of get a crew and how to put a TV show together. And before you know what I had two comedy shows, I had a show called ‘What’s so funny’. And then a talk show, I’m sorry, a talk show. So I developed four TV series. And at that point, somebody invited me on a radio show. Now you’re getting the hook here. And it was on a show the oldest running AM station on Long Island, New York called WGBB am 1240. And I was invited to be a guest. And the manager heard me and she said: ‘I’m giving you your own radio show. This is terrestrial radio.’ And she called me up on a Friday afternoon. It was about a foot of snow on the ground. I drive sports cars and sports cars don’t go in snow and ice. Her name was Joey and I said, Joey, I can’t get there in a half hour. I’m 45 minutes away. Now. It’s an hour and a half of this too much snow in my car won’t drive. She called me the next Friday and said I need a host quickly can you come in my guy can’t come and I said Joey, we have to stop doing this. She said come when the snow clears and bring your calendar. She gave me two live one hour radio shows. At no cost to me, no pay. But it was fair game I was getting read. I had no idea what I was doing. I came the first night with a briefcase loaded with horoscopes and news articles and anything I could find because I didn’t know what I was doing. All of a sudden, I was a radio host. And I just started calling up people I knew and talking to them, including a famous music composer, and other people I happen to know. And it started to hook on, it started to make sense. And then I learned out learned that I could get authors looking for publicity to come on my show and talk to them. So here’s how it worked. I did that for several years, drove from wherever my full time job was marketing job, whatever company I was working for, drove to Long Island, New York Whitestone wherever I was, and hosted the show. It was now Friday night 6pm drive time one hour. And I love the show. I was writing ads for the station. I was writing promos, PSAs I had a blast. It was wonderful. And then one night, I blew out a tire on my car on the parkway at dusk and I had to wait for a tow truck and a cop to come and rescue me. And I knew there was something called Internet radio that was just starting to get popular, Bryan. This was where it happened from a car accident from a blowout. And I investigated something called Blog talk radio, which was very inexpensive. And I started took my radio show from terrestrial to the internet. And from there somebody hired me to come and do a host a show for her.

What year was that, Bonnie?

Oh, my goodness, it was late 90s? I would say.

So yeah. So you’re definitely on the forefront of the internet?

I guess so, I guess so, people were doing it. But it wasn’t you know, there were a lot of people. But I think we were all just figuring it out. And then along the way, I was able to talk a manager with another job into letting me do a show on Voice America, which was my goal to be on a big internet platform. And she said yes. And that’s when the 50 Wiola, that’s when the 53 series started because I was doing I work for SAP, the big German based business software company. And my job was not broadcasting but I introduced that. So I was doing two jobs concurrently. I was doing my marketing job. And I was hosting radio. The radio show was so popular that teams started coming to me and saying can we do a series with you? So it was one series, October 5 2011 was the debut. Three guests were booked two were on vacation in Europe. They got the time mixed up. One guest showed up. I am going live now on my first business radio show and I said to this man who was a vice president of a mobility team at SAP. I said Dan, honey, this is before me to nobody get mad at me. I said Dan, Honey, we’re gonna talk about mobility for an hour follow my lead. He said okay, Bonnie, I’m yours. I never went back and listen to the recording because I have no idea what we said. The second week, the guest showed up. The third week my manager got in touch with me and she said I have news for you. And I thought she hates it. She’s gonna cancel it. She had given me a 13 week trial 13 week run. It was called a flight. She said I love it go big on funding you for a year. And I said oh my god, I don’t know enough people. I don’t know enough topics. What am I going to do for 52 weeks of live radio? And other teams started saying we want to do a show with you. So it went from one series. And then in 2012, I think there were three. And the next year there were five. And it just kept ballooning and ballooning. Before by the time I left SAP in 2019, I had started 48 radio series for them. And some of them are still going live today. So there, that’s how forefront cutting edge. I think I’d like to think that I’m part of a different type of radio, Bryan, because my shows are not and Wiola, you know, this. My shows are not interviews. They’re not one on ones. They’re not slide reading. They’re not scripted. They’re not rehearsed. They’re roundtable conversations with a three minute rule. Speak in three minutes, sound bites, no selling, no politics, good topics, and everybody gets a turn around the table. And that’s how I do it. So I hope somewhere in there, there was the answer you’re looking for.

Host – Wiola 15:48
Yeah, that’s, that’s an amazing story, actually. And you manage to say that in like 10 minutes, the story of your life. This is really nice.

Host – Bryan 16:00
Thank you. Thank you.

Host – Wiola 16:02
Yeah, so basically, you’re like, pioneer of internet radio. You are one of them.

Host – Bryan 16:09
I don’t know, I’d like to think so, I’ve, I have collected a list of testimonials against my better judgment and people saying that I have a way of taking very serious business topics and turning them into a good conversation with a lot of people sharing their insights. And they’re never boring, and they’re never dull or dry, and that we don’t sell. And that makes the difference. Because I call it pure thought leadership. Somebody gave me that term many years ago, a colleague. He said this is pure thought leadership is not pay for play. And I’ve been known when I found out that somebody was charging a team at SAP to be on one of my shows, I have cancelled that show. Because this was not a $10,000 speaking engagement. It was not walk on the stage and talk to you. This was in the beginning and you both will appreciate this. I think you’ll find it funny. This was all done on the telephone. Until a couple about two years ago, I switched to Zoom. This was not done face to face. I’ve been doing Zoom since just about the start of the pandemic 2020 I think, I said to the radio station, can I put all my shows on a Zoom platform, the engineer will join on Zoom and he’ll record the show will broadcast live on Voice America. But I will and then I then I found out I could apply to be a beta video live stream person on LinkedIn. I think it’s still in beta you got to apply. And you have to use a third party I use Restream. This this is all the hoops you have to jump through to do live stream on LinkedIn. So I was maybe fairly early on doing full hour long radio shows live streamed on LinkedIn. But I went from phone where I had to listen, ‘Is Bryan done? Because that was at a period and it was it was at a no that was a semicolon. He’s continuing the sentence. Okay.’ And and now I watch my guests think, I watch them sometimes they think with their hands. Sometimes they’re walking around, sometimes they’re moving, I watch their emotions, and I watch as they’re answering. And I can tell when they’re done.

That just makes the podcast that just more real doesn’t it right when you’re able to just see them.

Fabulous! And people talk about being Zoom fatigued after two years. I think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. I like seeing people I will never meet almost anybody who’s been on my shows. I talked to people all over the world. All timezones and I love being able to connect with them. Eye to eye. That to me is it’s it’s a modern, modern era gift of broadcasting, that we’re not sitting in a TV studio. Right. And we don’t have to travel somewhere we can see each other. So yes, yes.

Host – Wiola 18:46
That’s one of the biggest powers of technology.

Host – Bryan 18:49
Yep. And you have to adopt it, you have you have to understand and I bought a six foot green screen behind me and I bought a decent professional, almost professional quality microphone, I invested in my success. I invested in I took all of the backgrounds for and my own artwork. I’m an artist too, for my background. So I have a virtual background that shows the name of the show. And some of them have My name is there’s more behind me. But my point is that I invested in doing it well. On my own terms.

Yeah. And like speaking of success, you know that you’ve done now 606 episodes of technology, Technology Revolution: The Future of Now, which is amazing.

I have? [laugh]

Yeah. 606.

Guest – Bonnie 19:32
I didn’t know. Okay.

Host – Bryan 19:34
So where did the idea for this podcast come from? And where do you get your ideas for the podcast? Because, you know, when Wiola and I and the team we’ve went through the podcast, they’re just so varied in topics, right? There’s just so many things that you cover, right? So where do you come up with them? And you know.

Guest – Bonnie 19:55
Okay, the answer to the question is, this show started out as my main show for SAP coffee break with game changers in 2011. This is the one that I started in 2011. And when I separated from SAP, I realized that I had a platform that was very established, listeners all over the world. And guests who respected the platform. And I decided to take it back and make it my own. So I went to the leaders at Voice of America Radio, and I said, I want this to be my own platform. Can you help me rename it? And we literally in 20 minutes on a phone call myself and two people who were no longer with that company, sat down, and we just threw words out. And I said, it has to be about technology, evolution revolution, I don’t know. And then I said, I love the idea of the future of now, because it’s not here yet. Now, now, now the future. It’s after I said the word now. It’s now it’s in the past because it’s gone. I said, I like that. It’s almost a puzzle. What is the future of now? Well, when is the now it’s here? It was yesterday. What’s the future now? So I took basically the audience I had built for years. I don’t think anybody left being a fan of the show. But I changed the style from B2B to B2C. And I thought, What would I like to know about? Well, I’d like to know, what is this thing called adaptive clothing. So I found people who, who create clothing for people with certain physical disabilities and handicaps and I got a whole bunch of people to come on a woman who’s in a wheelchair was a college graduate, and she designs clothing, a guy who had a problem with his feet, and he designed adaptive shoes, a woman who, who manages runway shows for people in wheelchairs and who have other abilities for mobility. Let’s just put it that way. And then I decided, well, what is this thing called blockchain and I got the the vice president of one of the biggest seafood processing companies in the world to come on. And it was the first episode, I think, if you look back Bryan, you’ll see it was what’s on the menu for lunch today – blockchain and tuna fish sandwich. And I had such a good time, I try to pick clever titles. And my MO for how can I do 50 live shows on this series, in addition to some of my other series, is when I engage somebody on a topic I like, I say to them, bring three people to the panel, they bring the guests for my approval, I don’t go out and search, it would take me forever. So I find people who have colleagues who have connections, and I say you can’t bring everybody from one company can’t be everybody from XYZ company. Otherwise, it’s an advertisement. So what I do is I found interesting, too, I did one recently on the future of wine tourism.

Host – Bryan 22:29
Yes. One of my favorite episodes.

Guest – Bonnie 22:31
Yes, yes! Because this guy is an, the one one of the people who came to that show is an automotive expert at SAP, but he owns vineyards, and he’s now touring the world for wine tastings and, and he has his own. He’s growing lemoncello, or whatever it is. So anyway, the point is, I’m doing one a couple of weeks on technology and single dads. And I have a woman who’s a parent coach in Hawaii. And she’s finding three single dads who are using technology in some way to raise their kids or to communicate better with their extended families. I’m doing a show on I’ve done drones.

Host – Wiola 23:05
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one.

Guest – Bonnie 23:07
And the irony of that is that one of the guests who’s a newcomer, I have a bunch of people who are in drone companies. I on my creativity show read my lips cool conversations with creatives. And my name is aka Radio Red on that show Monday nights. on that show, I had a guest who wrote a book for his grown children on the secrets to a joyful life. Well, when I read his bio, it said that he’s inventing apps for drones. I said, Wait a minute, what is this about that wasn’t even his pitch to me. And, and he, he designed an app where he has a drone sitting, if you saw the show, he has a drone sitting on a beach somewhere in the Mediterranean, and he can rent you that drone with a geofence around it. And you can raise and lower that drone and go toward the beaches and the water. And he’s creating that app. It’s called Drizzy. And people can apply their own own drones to that program. I don’t know who pays the fee, the user or the person with the drone. And they can you can basically rent time with somebody else’s drone anywhere in the world. And I invited him with the drone specialists and they loved him. And we did a demo never done a demo on Technology Revolution. So I’m up to part three on drones. I have what I’ve done shows on a politeness and kindness. I’ve done shows on Internet of Things. What does it mean to you? It’s always with an application an eye toward everyday people. I’ll use it I won’t say regular people are real people are normal people, everyday people, people people, what does it mean to them? What what is what is this thing called technology and I always try to tie it I just did one with musicians, the future of music musicians composing and I’m now creating videos with my own art with a music track by Serge Hoffman, who is a wonderful digital composer, musician in France, and we become collaborators and friends and Serge brought me a bunch of musicians a group of musicians who are using technology in their music. So these are the types of topics. I like something that I think has a mass appeal that anybody will listen and say, well, it’s tech, but we’re not getting in the weeds. We’re not talking dashboards, we’re talking wine tourism, that’s so cool, or, yeah, how do people buckle their shoes when they can’t use their hands or they feed? And what would I do about it are people getting nicer or meaner on the internet without, without getting into the politics of those topics.

Host – Bryan 25:25
Which could be hard.

Guest – Bonnie 25:28
I have to be careful. But one of the special things about the show you may not be aware of is that every year at the end of the year, I invite everybody who’s been on any of my shows, the business shows the page shows where I am engaged by companies, and this the show and my Monday night creativity show. And I invite them to do a crystal ball prediction show. And I can have up to 16 people in one show a week. And I did seven weeks of crystal ball specials last year, those are my most popular shows. And everybody does know everybody already has a bio on a photo, there’s no quote, there’s nothing to submit for deliverables, just show up, pick a topic, steer clear politics, tech or not tech, pick a topic and predict for three minutes on the clock bingo. And I can get 16 people in one hour. And I had 80 guests last year, in seven or eight weeks. And it’s a blast. I send out 450 invitations during November. And I tell people don’t think about this in two weeks, it’s either you apply in 48 hours, or all the slots will be gone. It’s one of the hottest tickets, I think in radio and the shows are very, very popular. So that’s what I do with my guests as they get a treat of being on The Future of Now, at the end of the year in December or January. What do you think of that?

Host – Wiola 26:45
That’s brilliant.

Host – Bryan 26:46
[laugh] I think it’s crazy. But maybe, maybe it’s brilliant. Thank you very much.

Host – Wiola 26:54
You know, the special aspect of this show, the Technology Revolution, The Future of Now is you’re actually speaking through, like all aspects of life, where the technology is actually shaping the aspects of leaving and work with, you know, all of these devices and apps. And, and obviously, there are so many positive aspects of technology. And but also, they’re the scary ones. And I’m wondering, what’s your opinion on that? Like, what are some of the, you know, scarier aspects of technology that you know, anything in particular, we should worry about, or we as a people we should worry about or you are worrying about?

Host – Bryan 27:44
Well, what I worry about is the pressure to be on social media, and do and say things that you do or don’t mean but the visibility, that to me is the danger. But in terms of I’ll tell you, I a couple of years ago during the Academy Awards, the Oscars, I would have a Twitter feed up and I would watch what people were saying. Mean, nasty, hostile, scathing, derogatory, people watching about how the presenters looked how the award winners look what they were wearing, their tone of voice, their accents, the stuff that was, and that was the eye opener to me, because I was using Twitter as a business platform during my live radio shows. Bryan, I could tweet 20 times in a one hour live show, because I had a format I didn’t use it wasn’t pre programmed. But I had a format, you know, Bryan on on Technology Revolution just said and I’d pick up one of your talking statements from my notes and throw it in and click and I could do 20 tweets and and while I was hosting while I was online while I was everything, and that was before Zoom. When I’m on Zoom now I’m running the camera and I’m reading the chats. And there’s a lot more to do. I don’t do that. But I was very aware that there was a really mean negative hostile side to Twitter that I wasn’t seeing as a business user. And it disturbed me that you could click on somebody’s post and go into a place where it was misogynistic. It was chauvinistic. It was absolutely cruel and horrible. And that turned me off to Twitter. I didn’t want to be part of that. So to me, I made that decision to only post very limited amounts of information about My shows, Voice America posts actively about my shows and all of their their client shows on Twitter. But I steer clear of anything that’s controversial because I don’t want to get embroiled, and I don’t want to be attacked. And I don’t want to attack, I’m sure there are people who don’t like what I do and don’t like my style. I don’t think that business topics should have people quoting movie quotes. And I use I use a fictional quotes to introduce topics on all my business shows, which I think is very unusual. I think it’s very creative. I got tired of people quoting, let’s say they were quoting what Peter Drucker and they were quoting Gandhi, and they were quoting Mark Twain, and they were quoting Albert Einstein, and after a while I was falling asleep and Winston Churchill. I was falling asleep and yawning on my own shows, because everybody was quoting the same people. Oh, yeah. Einstein said this brilliant thing, and it applies. So I said, No, find me a movie quote. And you know what the most popular movie quote is now there were two popular ones, Bryan, it’s Coronel Nathan Jason, played by Jack Nicholson in the movie, A Few Good Men.

‘You can’t handle the truth.’

Guest – Bonnie 30:27
That’s it, you and you have how many people have used that on my shows about a business topic? We’re talking about you know, digitalization, we’re talking about Internet industry for Dotto, we’re talking and the business shows. And so what’s an opening quote, and they say you can handle truth what a fabulous quote, to use to read to back into a topic. Another one Dory, in Finding Nemo, the little blue team with a short term memory problem. Ellen DeGeneres waster, ‘Just keep swimming, swimming, just keep swimming’, great business quote. So I have my guests thinking creatively through pop culture to back into the topics, which I think gets people to listen. But to your point, the dangers of social media, I think are the anger, the angst, the hostility, I choose not to get involved with that.

Host – Wiola 31:15
Okay. No problem. But you know, in general, of course, you can choose not to be a part of that. Yes, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s evolving. Technology is just, you know, there are people who have bad intentions. And but and technology is just the weapon that technology is just the tool. So the tool like so that’s the that’s the most dangerous part. Like how to actually, for example, you know, how to prevent our kids from getting, you know, negative overwhelming aspects of technology?

Host – Bryan 31:52
Well, I think that’s probably going to come up on my show with single dads and technology is how if you’re a single dad, and you’re, you’re you weren’t raised to be a nurturer, how do you how do you keep kids from getting involved with things like that? How do you protect your children? How do you regulate? Right? And I think that’s, of course, it’s a big challenge. So I’m not giving one thing about my shows about my radio shows is that we don’t give instruction to people we don’t tell them you have to do this and you have to do that. But hopefully we can give them insights from the people on my shows, many of whom are professionals and experts insights into how to do things better by introducing the topics and the speakers, that’s all I can tell you. So yes, I’ve done shows about bullying, which is can be absolutely tragic internet bullying, and I’ve had people come on my my Monday Night Show, who have written books and who have their own shows about anti bullying and their their children have been the subject of bullying tragically. So I have gone into that but not not for several years. That’s my mission is to bring inspiration a little bit of a light, a little bit of joy, a lot of knowledge to my listeners. And there are plenty of media outlets and people who can help people specifically stay away from the evils of technology gone bad. And yes, we all know that. But I’ll give you an example is there we talked about self driving autonomous cars, and they need to be safer. Okay, we know they can be hacked. And we’ve seen the reports and we’ve seen all the, all the videos about cars going into ditches and over and there were a dystopian novels that are being written about people taking over the system for bad and having cars with diplomats in them. I had an author who wrote a book like that on one of my shows, cars being hijacked and sidetracked and sent into a ditch and people disappear because somebody, so we know that’s probably potentially, it’s there. If they’re writing about it, we know somebody’s going to do it. That’s the problem. However, the good is that scientists in Boston are using machine learning to help train the autonomous systems in cars, how to know the difference between a raindrop, a snowflake, and a person crossing a road to make the car safer. Their rate is 92%. Not quite good enough for me to get an autonomous car. [laugh] But they’re using the technology to have cars on roads. I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where you have roundabouts. Do you know what a roundabout is?

Yes, yes.

Guest – Bonnie 34:23
Well, these were six roads converging in a roundabout and who goes first, you know who’s on the right, the rule is of your right, well, everybody’s on the right of somebody. So they’re using these areas of Cambridge, Massachusetts to train these cars in how to drive more safely. So that’s technology for potentially bad being used for good to make travel safer for more people who won’t have their own cars and won’t have to learn how to drive. So. So there, there’s the cutting edge, there’s the edge the sword. Okay.

Host – Wiola 34:54
Yeah, that’s, that’s a perfect example.

Host – Bryan 34:57
Thank you. I’m reaching hard to find something for you.

Well, I guess I guess for me, like, you know, obviously, you’ve had a few drone episodes. Right. And, you know, you’ve spoken to people about the positive sides of drones. Right. But from my perspective, you know, I think drones are something that could be used for very nefarious reasons, as we’ve seen. Yeah. So you know, that that’s definitely one of the ones that, you know, there’s amazing things you could do with drones, and there’s terrible things you could do with them. Right? So you know, just finding the balance of, you know.

Yes, one of the gentlemen on my shows, it was in a traffic jam at one point. And he saw that there was an ambulance or a car with some kind of a medical symbol trying to get blood for a transfusion to a hospital. And he realized they weren’t going to get there in time. And he went back to his office and invented a drone app, to pick up these critical materials I’ll call it, and to, to get them to some place where they’re needed to save lives. So this was a question of necessity was the mother of invention. These are the kinds of people I like to talk to – people who saw a need and created something. Do we all need to rent a drone on a beach somewhere? Probably not. When I bought this house where I’m living in now in North Carolina, I was told this was a house of the drone guy. I said, What are you talking about? They said the previous owner had a drone. He used to fly it over people’s backyards. And everybody knew Doug was the drone guy. So well, I didn’t bring a drone with me. And I wondered, what was he doing? Looking at people’s backyards? We’ll just we’ll just leave that one alone. But I assured them that I don’t have a drone, and I’m not peeking in people’s backyards and on their terraces. So, so yes.

So that definitely wasn’t your drone in my backyard?

Guest – Bonnie 36:40
No, definitely not. But I might find out whose it was. [laugh]

Host – Bryan 36:47
What technologies or what emerging technologies do you really think, are kind of like under the radar now, but over the next 10 years, they’ll just have such a major impact in our lives.

Guest – Bonnie 36:59
Oh my goodness. Internet of Things is already here. But I think there will be more connectivity in terms of help with medical processes for people who can’t get to a doctor don’t want to maybe don’t have the means to to pay for insurance, but we might extend health care to people through connectivity if they can get some connectivity. I think that whereas in previous generations, recent generations of seniors like my mom who lived to 100, my mom had a an Mac and then she had she hated the Mac, we got her a PC. She hated that. We gave her back a Mac, her friends were all in their 90s. At the time mom passed away in 2017 at the age of 100. Her friends were getting gifts of laptops and cell phones from their grown children, children, and they were saying I don’t want this. I don’t want it. I’ll pick up the phone if I want to talk to you. But I think as we go on and I’m a boomer, I admit that I’m a baby boomer. My generation is involved with tech and we’re not going to be afraid of it. We’re not going to be suspicious. We’re not going to be the technophobes. We’re going to be the technophiles, or at least we will accept it. So I think we’re going to see more technology acceptable to people who can benefit from it. As they get older, instead of saying, Oh, what’s that thing? Yes, I have a cell phone, I just have to remember to charge it. That’s what they’re gonna say. Or they’re gonna say, texting, what?! So that kind of thing will happen. But I think as we see the population continue, people stay alive longer, we’re going to see more adoption of cutting edge technologies that can do more for lifestyles for continuing and thriving. That’s where I see the good as far as far as autonomous cars go that technology. I on my shows I do why I do one on automotive. I used to say at the end of all the shows, five years from now, will you still have the keys to your own car in your pocket? And most of them said yes. And I said, You bet. I’ll always have a sports car in the garage. Even though I only drive it once a week now.

Host – Bryan 38:57
Alright, so I think we have five minutes so I think we usually this is the part where we go like rapid fire some.

Guest – Bonnie 39:04
Okay, I’m bringing up my seatbelt on I go into my I got my drumsticks. Hold on. I got I got my drumsticks one. One of each. Red one and the quiet one.

Host – Wiola 39:14
The red ones.

Guest – Bonnie 39:14
Yeah, I’m ready. Okay, what else, my drum set is red. What do you think?

Host – Bryan 39:18
So what movie or TV show do you think that you’ve seen accurately reflects how you think the future will be in terms of the role of technology or anything? And it’s, this is kind of a bad question or a dystopian question, because every futuristic movie is very dystopian, in terms of how technology affects us. Right? So maybe you have a different answer. Or you know, we’re really interested here.

Guest – Bonnie 39:46
I don’t go to movies. I don’t watch movies. I don’t go anywhere near dystopian, because it makes me feel uncomfortable. But I will tell you that my passion is watching French language detective shows. And my favorite show right now is Cherif, which is done in France, but they’re dropping each series a couple of weeks apart here in the US, and I used to speak fluent French. And now I just watch the English subtitles. And I pick up whatever they say. And I love that candies Renoir. I’m into the, those are it? And to me, the future? Let me answer your question. The future is people who still bring empathy to their job and know how to think and feel and are passionate and clever and creative in solving problems. And no matter how good the technology in terms of DNA tests for that, I’m talking about the police, in terms of the DNA tests, and the microscopic, and the examination of the bodies after a murder, no matter how much it’s the person who looks and thinks and tries to figure out what really happened. That is the genius it is that’s the brilliance of solving crimes. And I think no matter how much tech we have, it will still take people who care and who feel and who think and have empathy and empathy is what’s missing in tech. It isn’t we’re not there yet. So I roundabout way I really didn’t answer but that’s the best I’m gonna give you Bryan.

Host – Bryan 41:11
No, that’s fine. Do you have a podcast for us to recommend?

Guest – Bonnie 41:16
Oh, I don’t listen to podcasts. I’m too busy producing them. [laugh] Mine! Listen to, yes, I will tell you a really fun show to listen to as my Monday Night read my lips cool conversations with creatives with Radio Red, I get such and these are not all singers, dancers, painters. These are people from all walks of life. Sometimes a guest last week just told me he never thought that he was a creative person until he met me and I said ‘you are creating things in your life, your lifestyle, your profession’. And he said he never, he was a biologist or something like that. He said: ‘I never thought that I was being creative’. And I said yes, you are looking at everything you’ve accomplished. And he appreciated that he had to send me four statements about creativity. So if you want to see people approaching their life, and we don’t lecture, it’s it’s just like listen to these four people or three people a week talking in, you know, my three minute rule sound bites, what their attitude on creativity is. It’s very revealing. And that to me, my show Monday Nights is one of my favorite podcasts. So there you go. I don’t listen to other people’s podcasts. Yes, go ahead.

Host – Wiola 42:25
I have a question. So I saw your videos. The one like of your paintings combined with the music of your French friend artist, which are really beautiful. Are you all of them are your paintings?

Guest – Bonnie 42:38
All of them are my, two of them are my daughter’s my daughter was started painting when she was 13-14 years old and it’s designated as rose M with the initial M and those are my daughters. But there were two of those. The rest are all mine. I’ve done about 200 paintings in the last three years.

Host – Wiola 42:53
Amazing. Yes, they are really beautiful.

Guest – Bonnie 42:57
Thank you.

Host – Wiola 42:57
My question is so what.

Host – Bryan 42:59
I guess final question.

Host – Wiola 43:00
Who, yes the final question, so who is your favorite artist? If you can pick one that inspires you?

Guest – Bonnie 43:09
Favorite artist. I would go with a very, very classical answer. I like Picasso because he saw things in people’s faces and in scenes that people don’t didn’t dare they, Oh, I have to make it round. Because it’s an apple, oh, I have to put the nose in the middle. Because that’s what people look like. I see things. I do acrylic paint pouring and things appear on the canvases that I didn’t put there. There were elephants in a forest and one of my paintings that I didn’t paint elephants, I didn’t put them there. There were people on a stage on Broadway and I named it Broadway recovering after COVID. I didn’t put the people here, but there were dancers and actors on a stage. So my paintings revealed to me, and I don’t know, there probably are a lot of modern artists today who do something similar, but I don’t paint specific things. I let the painting reveal to me what’s there. So I would go back to Picasso as as somebody I admire because he saw things a different way. And I see things that are talking to me in my paintings. Okay.

Host – Wiola 44:13
Yeah.

Host – Bryan 44:14
And that was Bonnie D. Graham, the creator of Technology Revolution: The Future of Now. Bonnie, thank you so much for being a guest today.

Guest – Bonnie 44:23
Cheers! Bisou bisou! ‘Kiss kiss’ in French.

Host – Wiola 44:26
Thank you, Bonnie.

Host – Bryan 44:26
Bye, Bonnie, thank you so much. We’ll be in touch.

Ending 44:29
Thank you for listening to ‘How We Innovate’. A podcast by Applandeo. Get your apps and web apps built today by visiting applandeo.com. We’re Applandeo.