#H2HChat The Internet of Mysterious Things with Lisa Seacat DeLuca

I forgot to tell you about saying working.

OK, we are live. Hello! So always, always think you're live no matter what. Right? That's the thing we have to realize here. We are going to be doing some fun stuff. I've got my whole Twerboard up. I've got everything ready. Ready to go for what is going to be an epic HTH. I can feel it. Can you?

I totally can, down to my toes.

Wow, she can feel it down to her toes. What's that feel like?

Uh, toe-y.

Toe-y. All right, so, um, we are very excited to be here. Uh, Courtney, how has your week been?

My week is just starting because it's Monday.

Okay.

But my weekend was Fantastic. As you know, weekends are for binge watching, so that's what we've been doing. Binge watching Parenthood is our latest show, so we are enjoying that. It's really super, super cute.

It is. The binge watching is—it takes up the whole weekend.

We'll start tomorrow.

Okay, so and and one other thing that I wanted to ask. Courtney, before we introduce our guest, is, um, is how is the book doing?

The book? My book, I'm assuming that you're referring to?

Yes.

Uh, that would be 21 Reasons Creativity Is Like Sex. I assume that it's going well. I have not checked, but I am getting really good feedback. If any of you guys have read it, please reach out to me. Let me know what you thought, good or bad. And, uh, I love hearing that stuff.

Awesome. So, so, so really having a lot of fun with that. And that is why I asked and am really excited to have Courtney on board with, with this show, because we are going to be talking about creativity and innovation, which is a great entree or entryway.

Segue.

Segue, thank you, into our guest. Lisa, is it full, all 3 names? Lisa C. Cat

Yes, definitely made a name.

Okay, and Lisa spoke a wonderful TED Talk at the same TED Talk that I was at, so we got to know each other there, which was kind of nice. In fact, we were both frozen solid in our seats before we had to go up, looking at each other like, this is craziness. I will never forget the moment that we looked at each other and we're like, What the hell are we doing? Yeah. Did you feel like that?

I did, but I learned a lot, especially from you, 'cause you do talks all the time. And just seeing you a little nervous made me feel a little bit better.

Aw. I wasn't just nervous, I was peeing my pants. So I, you know what? That's so funny that you say that because I was behind the stage with Brad Bird, who actually directed like The Incredibles and all kinds of Pixar movies. And he was, sorry, but he was shitting his pants. Like he was really nervous. And I looked at him and I said, how could you be nervous? You like direct some of the multi-million, if not billion-dollar films and speak to like casts. And he goes, it's not TED. It's totally different than TED.

Well, I would imagine something about those 3 big red letters on stage are incredibly intimidating, but I did go back this morning and watch part of your TED Talk back, Lisa, and you did a fantastic job.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was fun. It was pretty much my first big talk. I'd only done small little conferences, so it was scary for me, but it wasn't— I didn't realize how scary I should have been, at least how scared I should have been.

Yeah, I should have been more scared. I didn't realize how huge it was. No, it was, it was really great. Can you believe it was over 2 years ago?

I know, time flies. A lot's changed since then, right?

Seriously, seriously. And Lisa, I'm gonna— I would love for you, if you wouldn't mind, to do just kind of a quick intro also of yourself. I can't do it justice the way that I know you know you. And please walk everybody through like the stuff that you've done and the incredible things that you've accomplished, because I think it's really Really cool. We have a lot of people on Twitter right now that are really excited to hear, hear from you.

Yeah, well, I am a technologist, technology strategist. I work for IBM. I've been with IBM for about 13 years, and I'm IBM's most prolific female inventor. So in 13 years, I've filed about 650 patent applications. 250 or so have been granted so far. So that's pretty much what I'm most well known for within IBM. I'm, as a software engineer, I'm always tinkering with things and playing with technologies outside of work, a little fun side projects. I'm also a mom of 2 sets of twins. So my— Wow. No, it's crazy.

So those would be your greatest inventions, I would imagine.

My biggest accomplishments right there, just staying alive and making it through the weekend. But yeah, I work from home, which is great. You can probably hear the kids screaming every now and then in the background, but yeah, that's me.

That's awesome. And I wanna get into like what you're working on now. So we'll work our way there 'cause I know everybody's gonna wanna hear about what's happening in your life now. But I'm curious if you can just kind of like shed some light on what it takes to just get one patent like submitted and granted. Where did, like, from idea to submission to actually them accepting, like, timeline, is it like years or is it days or like how does that all work?

Yeah, it can take a while. So usually within IBM we have brainstorming teams where you meet with a bunch of other people and just kind of talk about ideas. You talk about problems that you run into or cool new technologies and how you think Those technologies could change to make them even cooler. And then you start doing some prior art searching. So that's just all about going online and doing some research and figuring out what exists in that space. And that's kind of one of my points when I get really excited, because sometimes I'll find my idea already exists. And then I— it's a challenge for me to kind of shift it and come up with something new that doesn't exist from what I've found. So once we get to a point where we have that idea, We submit it through the IBM process and there's an internal review board that is subject area experts and they know a lot in that field. And you go and you present your idea in about 15 minutes. You usually have about 5 minutes to talk about it and then they ask you lots of questions. And then from there, if you get a search rating, then IBM does a formal search and does some formal prior art searching. And then you have to defend your idea from what they find.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, and then that's just the beginning, right? And then you're assigned a lawyer who actually writes it up, and you sign away all your rights to IBM, and, uh, it becomes a patent application.

Wow.

Wow.

Well, that— I love what you said about, uh, getting most excited about an idea when you find out that it already exists, and then you have to challenge yourself to go actually iterate on it. In my opinion, that's really the definition of creativity, right? Which is positive problem solving. So I think that that's the kind of curiosity that we need more of in this world.

Yeah, yeah. It's funny how it can break one idea into multiple so fast when you find something that's similar.

Well, it's probably not as easy as— you make it sound easy. I'm glad that it's easy for you. That means that you're on your path, you know?

Yeah, I've actually filed a couple myself outside of IBM. So at IBM, you do a lot, you're called a master inventor. And I didn't really feel comfortable calling myself a master inventor unless I like actually wrote up the patent. I don't know why. So I, I came up with a few ideas outside of work and asked for approval to submit it on my own. And I wrote the whole patent myself. So instead of using a lawyer, I typed it all up, did all the claims, and went through an office action back and forth with the examiner. And I learned a ton from that process. It really kind of challenged me too.

Wow. Wow. What, um, what would you say is the hardest part about that process?

Uh, about going through submitting it yourself? Um, for me, it was not really knowing what to expect and not having a lawyer friend to ask, like, what should I do? And I— it's not going through right now. And I found out that you can call up your examiner on the phone and talk to them. And I didn't realize that at first. So I was just responding. And when I finally got through to my examiner, he's like, I thought you were a lawyer because it was so well written. I'm like, thank you, but I'm not. And from there he was so helpful because there aren't that many inventors that actually file patents themselves. So he was really like wanting to work with me and help me get it to the point where it was going to be accepted.

Hey Lisa, do you have a— is there any light in the room? Do you have a light bulb of any kind or you're like— yeah, awesome, awesome. Yeah, we're seeing a bit of darkness. I just want to make sure everybody can see your nice face. In the screen. So I'm curious now, when you have put through that many suggestions, did they kind of just start to look at you and go, Lisa's coming, we better just approve this?

I don't know. I hope not. You know, one of my favorite things about inventing is it doesn't matter who you are or how many inventions you've thrown out there. It's everybody starts from the same ground level and has the same opportunity to have their idea heard and made into a patent.

Yeah.

Do you have anyone who's gunning for you?

No, I hope so too. I hope someone is. I'm the most prolific female inventor and I'm, I think I'm the only one to reach the 100th plateau and I'm on 155th right now. So I really hope more women start inventing and, you know, come catch up with me because I'd be happy to share the title.

Is there a, is there a college degree that you would focus on to do what you're doing? And how would you, or, or how would you get started to do what you're talking about?

Yeah. Um, I think just being at a company like IBM where they really foster innovation and encourage it and make it so easy because we do have lawyers that help, it's a lot easier to get started. And once I got started, it just came so naturally and it's how I approach life and all my problems I run into is just opportunities. But I did get a master's in technology commercialization, and that was all about how to start your own business. I like to say it's a— it's an MBA for technical folks. And I learned a ton from that process as well, just about, you know, coming up with new ideas and being creative.

Yeah, that is certainly— that's certainly the fun, I think, in any, any job when you get to be your most creative.

I concur.

Do you agree?

Shocker.

I had no idea she was going to say that. So tell us about how you balance your life between inventing— basically, like, if you've submitted over 600 or 700, I mean, if you think about that, that's like one every other day for 2 years, or one every third day for 3 years. And I mean, either way, any way you look at it, You're busy and then you have 2 sets of twins and you're working on books and we're going to talk about your newest book. So you're pretty busy. How do you balance all of that?

Yeah. It's just, I think it's like anything, you just have a good support system and I don't, I've rarely invented alone. So I have a team of other inventors that we work together. Typically there's at least 3 of us on a disclosure and everybody does their part in writing up each of the ideas. So, You know, one idea can quickly become 3, and you don't— you're only doing a third of the work because everyone's pulling their own weight. So they can add up really quickly. So you're not actually writing up that many a day. It's the group that's working together. And then as far as my home life, I mean, we have an au pair. She's from Brazil and she lives with us. So I'm able to, you know, have a lot of help and support with the kids. And my husband's super supportive.

So walk us through the thought process. You have your first set of twins and then you're like, okay, we're ready to do this again, but thank God we're not going to have twins again. Like, I couldn't do twins.

Yeah.

What did you do?

What is that like? Well, we had our older set's boys and I'm like, I really want to try for a girl. My husband's like, okay, we can try for a girl. And we didn't really know what to expect and we had 2 sets of everything. And as soon as I found out I was pregnant, my husband's like, okay, let's just get rid of that extra crib and all the other things. We'll never need 2 again. And then we go to the ultrasound and we see the 2 sacs and we immediately just started cracking up before the technician could say anything. And she's like, it's twins. And we're like, yeah, we know.

What are the odds of that? I can't even imagine.

I don't know. We looked it up a few times, but I don't remember.

You, like, you are literally defying the odds in your job and in life.

Yeah, I'm just, I like to multitask.

Maybe you could share with us the lottery numbers, 'cause I would like to know.

My lucky number has always been 22, and it's funny that I ended up with 2 sets of twins.

Alan Berkson is on the Twitter chat right now. He has 1 set of twins, and he tweeted out, did I just hear her say she had 2? So he obviously empathizes with you. Lisa, what do you think makes a good inventor great?

A good inventor great. That's a hard question. I know a lot of inventors and I know a lot of great inventors, and I think the ones that are great can take an idea and see the opportunity for invention in anything, even the things that already exist. It's just a way of thinking and changing, like I already said, morphing an idea into something bigger.

That's a good one. It's certainly hard because everybody has their own way. Everyone's creative in their own way. And so, you know, it certainly is a hard one to answer. I threw you a— I tried to do the softballs up front. But what— What, what do you see that's coming? What, what kind of things can we look forward to that, that are on the exciting side that, that you're seeing as an inventor that, you know, are like, oh my God, this is gonna be an incredible era to live in?

Mm-hmm. I would have to say my latest obsession is for sure around like AI and cognitive computing is what we say at IBM, right? Being able to make things a little bit smarter. smarter and improve our lives that way. I love like the personal agent space and like the Amazon Alexa or Google Home. I'm so obsessed with what they can do. And as a developer, I'm like, I got to see how this works. So I wrote a couple skills and it's really pretty easy. It's basically mapping a sentence to an API call. So anybody can do this. And I think we're gonna start seeing more and more people start being able to naturally interact with our things just with our voices.

What Alexa scripts did you write?

I have 2 out there right now. One is laundry NFC, and that one's live. So that one, I have another side project I'm working on, and basically you can add these NFC chips to your washer and dryer, and you can tap your smartphone to it to start your machine on your device. So you get a push notification when your washer is done, for example. And I thought it'd be really cool to have a skill so you can say She's probably listening right now, but if you could say, Alexa, how much time is left on my washer? Or start my dryer, with your voice without having to pull out your phone.

You know, it sucks for the people whose names are Alexa.

I know, but you can change your wake word.

Can you please write an Alexa script to fold my clothes?

Yeah, no. There is a machine coming out for that. If I try that, it'll say, I'm sorry, I'm learning, but maybe your kids will help you.

Yeah, fat chance of that.

Okay, so let's dive into your latest project. Yeah. You sent me a really exciting email about, I don't know, 4 weeks ago. I really was excited for you because this was your second book, correct?

Yeah.

And tell us first about your first book, and then we'll go into the second book.

Okay, so my first book ever that I wrote is called A Robot Story: Learn to Count to 10 in Binary. And, um, when I went to college, I didn't have any programming experience. And we started talking a lot about binary and it seemed like everyone just had it memorized already. And I'm like in my head multiplying powers of 2. And so I thought it'd be really fun to make a book where you basically memorize, um, how to count from 0 to 10 in binary. So I Kickstarted that one and ended up raising $13,000. It's available on Amazon and shipped it all over the world.

Wow. Wow. And, um, and you said that was on Amazon?

Yeah, it's on Amazon now.

Nice.

I just self-published it, so I never like got a real publisher to do it. It's just fun on the side.

I'm super jealous that I didn't think of the Kickstarter idea. Dang it, because I self-publish as well, and it, it can get expensive, you know, when you're trying to ship books places and

So, so, and you're using the Kickstarter for your second book. Let's talk about the second book a little bit, and then we'll jump into Kickstarter and how that's going and how everybody can even support you.

Yeah, sure. So my second book, I have it right here. There it is. It's called The Internet of Mysterious Things, and I teamed up with a new illustrator on this one. His name's Adam Record. And basically the concept for the story is, is that there's this alternative universe where You learn about the Internet of Things and how it works from mysterious creatures, like when you turn a— press a button in an app to turn on a light, it's actually a leprechaun that's dashing across your screen, and inside your Alexa is a little fairy that answers all the questions. So that was kind of the idea. I thought it'd be a playful way to get kids excited about how technologies work. But I also want to take it a step further and actually explain how technology works. So each of the pages, I don't know if you can see it, but there's these hidden creatures and they're just NFC tags. So you can take your phone and tap your phone to it and it'll launch more information and stats about the technology. So you can learn more with your kids.

Oh, wow. So, and how does that work? Like the, I'm a marketer, so, like, what's the process that that they get to learn and play with, and how does that work?

Sure. So if you can see, I'll just give you a little example. So you just take your phone— it already tapped it— but you tap it, and then it basically is a URL that's encoded on these little tags.

Look at that.

It goes to my website, which is the Internet of Mysterious Things. And you can see there's a little animation of all the pages, and then you can scroll through. Scroll down and just read a little bit more about the technologies.

Wow.

Yeah.

How cool is that?

I'm

on your website right now. That's what that little outburst was. It was the music on your website. I wasn't expecting that, but super cute and such a great idea to connect the online world with the offline print world. It makes it such a more tactile experience for anyone who's trying to learn because they can both touch it and then see it in motion. I think that's fantastic.

Yeah.

So we are getting, just so everybody knows, we're getting lots of questions as always. Love the fact that everybody knows questions are coming. But if you're new to the, if you're new to the chat, then, then you'll want to use the hashtag #H2HChat inside of Twitter. And, and, and go ahead and give us as many questions as you like. We will try to get to all of them. I typically try to, uh, do, uh, we typically get to them. The other thing I wanted to let you know is that we are now trending nationally in the United States, um, on Twitter at number 43. So congrats to Lisa and to everyone who is tweeting. Thank you so much. Uh, really appreciate it.

I feel like I should say human. Maybe that's a human moment.

And when we say human on the show, this happens.

It just needed applause. That was kind of

cool. So, Lisa, just so you know that it does— anytime you say human, that's what's going to happen. OK, so let's talk about the idea behind the book. Where did you come up with it? And how did you start thinking about how you're going to implement something like that?

Sure. I probably should turn off Alexa. Basically, I thought of the idea because I was at a tech conference, right? And this big general session had just let out, and I was walking against the flow of people. They were all coming out of the building, and I was walking in, and I was looking around, and everybody was looking down at their devices and their smartphones, and they weren't even talking to the people next to them. And I kind of giggled to myself and thought, this is what life's turned into. We're all so consumed with our digital lives that sometimes we're missing out on things right in front of our eyes. And then as a parent, I felt the same way with my kids. Like, they're asking me questions and I'm sitting here on my smartphone ignoring them. And so I was constantly, you know, nagging my husband, we have to put down our phones and pay attention to our kids. And from there, the idea hit me that it would be really fun to have this kids' book that made all of the things around us work because of these creatures that we're not seeing because we're not really paying attention. And then at the end of the story, I say, talk about the future and what the inventions might be and how we need to put down our smartphones and our tablets so that we don't miss out on these creatures.

That's so cute.

Jennifer Quinn just said, oh my God, that's so adorable, the concept there. So I couldn't agree more. And the illustration work is so beautiful.

Thank you. Yeah.

Who was it again? How did you guys come up with that together?

Yeah, so he's done a lot with Penguin Random House and all these amazing things. And I actually found Adam Record from my sister. So my first Kickstarter, my sister came up with an idea for a book and she's like, I wanna do what you did. And I'm like, okay. So I kind of mentored her through the process of doing a Kickstarter. And my first illustrator, he's from Latvia. I found him online and I asked him if he could do my sister's book and he was busy. And so she started putting her feelers out about getting an illustrator for her. and ended up running into Adam and just fell in love with his artwork. And I loved her book, so I begged him to do artwork for me. That's how we met.

Oh, that's great. That's great. And how's her book doing?

Hers got picked up by Penguin, so—

Oh, wow.

Yeah, she just sent me a link yesterday. It's called Even Superheroes Have to Sleep, and it's available in March. And she just sent me a link that Target's selling it, so I'm so excited for her. I think—

Wow.

Oh, that's fantastic. You guys are both very, uh, both slouches. I'm sorry your parents didn't raise better kids.

Right? We're inspired by our children. So hers was that her kids were running around at bedtime or something, and, um, she's— and they had these capes on. She's like, even superheroes have to sleep. And she's like, that's a book idea!

That's the light bulb goes off.

Yeah.

Are your kids interested in inventing things?

They are. I talk about it a lot. I'm always like, what are you— what did you invent today? Or what'd you come up with? Then asking them, what would you do with this? What could you make out of it? And they both start thinking. I can see the gears turning in their heads. Oh, I could do this with that. But they're pretty young. I mean, my boys are 4. So it's more about that creative thinking and trying to get them to go in that space.

So, so the world— I'm just to shift just a little bit. The world is becoming more connected. The book, while it's, it's fun for the kids to learn, there is a major topic there, and that is a different connected world. And I know you said that you're interested in artificial intelligence. I'm sure you saw maybe the Mark Zuckerberg video with how he made his— or heard about it— how he made his entire house artificially intelligent with Morgan James' voice. No, Morgan Freeman. Thank you. Morgan James, that's my publisher.

That would be not as interesting. I mean, nice guy,

but he got some free airtime, so he's happy,

right?

Um, so, plug,

plug.

So, um, what, what, like, how far do you think this is gonna go? Like, I know I get the whole voice activation and artificial intelligence

I think we have a long ways to go to where it's to the point of being scary. I mean, what's happening right now is, like I said, it's really just a couple API calls that you can trigger from your voice. And then a lot of the cognitive computing isn't really systems that are learning and self-learning. It's more, you know, taking evidence-based facts and data and making conclusions or finding insights from that. I don't think we're quite there yet. Yeah, I think that's a good point. to the point where it's going to be scarier, that the computers are going to, you know, team up against us and take over society. But I don't know, I hope that more and more things will start being connected because the technologies are going to get cheaper. And I kind of talked about that in my TED Talk, that, you know, in the future technology will be everywhere and it's just going to make it so that we have more time to spend with our family and our friends and the things that actually matter. Because some of the stuff that we're doing right now that's mundane tasks will be taken care of for us.

Mm-hmm,

right.

How at risk for security do you feel like we're gonna be though when that happens, when everything is connected and, you know, technologically connected, like from hackers?

Mm-hmm. I mean, I know there's a bunch of teams that are working on that at the same time when people are making advancements in AI. There's a whole other team in security that's working to make sure it's secure. So it's always a question of security and making you feel comfortable and that your privacy is a big factor with all these companies. You just got to go with people that you trust, like IBM. IBM plug. Go with companies that you know are trustworthy and don't just give your idea, your information out to just anybody.

The intellectual arms race.

Yeah.

It feels like I I tell the story all the time on stage, but, you know, I installed— I think it was Philips smart light bulbs in our house, and I did it with using if this, then this, so that when I left the house or arrived to the house, then the lights would go on or they would turn off automatically when I leave or I came home. The problem is that when I was about 2 blocks away, I got a text message from Courtney saying, Why are all our lights out? It didn't realize that my entire family is still home. Uh-huh. And so there's, you know, while I agree with you that we're just on the precipice of this awesome stuff, but the self-aware, you know, capability of knowing like your family's still home, I'm going to stop it so that you don't get into your first argument with your wife ever.

Yes, our first argument, that's what it was.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Like, how far are we from that? Just the smart, you know, just self-aware, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have a similar situation. I have an app called Life360 and everybody who has a smartphone in our house, so my au pair, my husband, and I, it knows when all 3 of us leave the house and then would turn off the lights. But then you have young people like kids, which hopefully aren't home alone, but there's other situations where you might have a guest You know, my mom comes and visits or a different babysitter where you don't want to have that happen. But then there's other sensors that can help with that as well, like motion sensors in the house and cameras. I mean, I have a million cameras everywhere, and I think we're gonna see more of that, devices talking to each other to be a little bit smarter because they know a little bit more about what's around them.

Yes, I agree, which is That's, I think, the scary part for a lot of people.

Yeah,

you know, just because it's almost like living your life— well, there's no privacy anymore, you know. There's always something being recorded, or you're always on camera, or— which is ironic since we're on camera anyway,

right?

Obviously we're okay with it.

Yeah.

You know, but I think that there is going to be probably an extended adoptive curve there because, you know, the Doomsday, people are never gonna do that.

Yeah, it's not for everybody. I mean, my grandma's like, why do you have a website? People are gonna find you. I'm like, if someone wanted to find me, they know where to find me. Like, yeah, it's not gonna change that. But yeah, it depends on who you're talking to.

Oh, can I ask this one question? Just because— so Randy Theo, who joins us every week— what's up, Randy? He asked a really good question that I'm particularly interested in, which is, what 1 or 2 habits do you practice daily that allows you to stay innovative and creative?

That's a good question.

To stay innovative and creative. I mean, I'm pretty organized. I don't know if that helps me stay creative, but I use like a to-do list app and make sure at the beginning of the day I know exactly what I need to get done. And I also block off my own calendar. So on Fridays, for example, in the morning, I'll say I'm busy in a meeting, and that gives me time to just think and to have, you know, alone time to do some coding and get some actual work done. And that helps me be creative because I'm not being distracted with all the other people that want my attention.

Yeah, and by the way, that is super important if anyone out there is trying to find ways to be more creative, you absolutely nailed it, is creating the space and environment for yourself to be creative, to give yourself the gift of time to think and the gift of space where you can explore new ideas and create new connections. So I love hearing that because it's such a— it's a consistent theme, you know, across the people who I talk to about creativity specifically. So. It's good to know.

Fun fact. You gotta be selfish sometimes.

So just continuing on, since we've switched into the Q&A portion of HDA Chat, keep your questions coming. I'm monitoring them and we'll be— I've been sitting here copying and pasting all your questions as they come in. So we'll go ahead and start asking those. Thank you, Randy, for kicking that off. The next question is from Nancy Rubin, and she said, what is strategic design thinking? And how can it empower designers or even— and I'm slipping this in— the future of what you're doing?

Okay, so she must be an IBMer. We're really big into design thinking at IBM, and it's a new way of thinking where you get people together and you kind of start talking about the opportunities and the problems for whatever it is your product is or your new offering that you're coming up with. And one thing I really like about it is it So everyone's anonymous, so you get a little Post-it note, right? And everybody's answering the same questions by jotting down answers on the Post-it note and putting it up on the wall. And you don't put your name on it or anything, so everyone's, you know, can come up with their own ideas. Some people don't like to vocalize, and they're— but they like to type, or they're okay being quiet and sharing their ideas that way. So it's really a cool way of getting everybody to contribute and feel safe in the design or the creative thinking, you know, when you're coming up with a product idea and so forth. And I think that goes really well into patenting or coming up with invention ideas. The first design thinking I ever did, I took a little sticker and on the back of all the ideas I thought were interesting, I put this sticker for what could be patentable. And a lot of people were like, oh, that's— I didn't think my idea could be patented. But that encouraged them to go kind of explore the patenting process.

Wow. You know, we had the opportunity to go through a design thinking workshop with IBM a few years ago, and it really is a cool way of sort of starting with the end and working backwards with the problem. And the best explanation that was given to us in this workshop was they started off and said, hey, draw us a vase, you know. And so everyone, of course, did the traditional vase shape. in some iteration, and then put their Post-its up on the wall. And then the next question was, okay, a better question would be, draw me a vessel that holds flowers. And so then people were able to think past what that traditional vessel would look like, the traditional vase. And then they came up with all sorts of stuff, like a table that had, you know, indentations in the middle, or a glass wall that had holes in it that you could You know, stick the flowers in and then it would be watered from the outside. And, you know, so it's such a better way to think about coming up with a variety of solutions.

Mine was a wine bottle. I thought it could be a vase too.

Yeah, and you have to drink the wine first, so.

Yeah, I was gonna say that the key is that it's empty.

Now you see how I think.

Not a problem.

Okay, so just to keep going on the questions here, we've got another one for Um, Alan, from Alan Berkson. Um, don't worry, JS. JS always throws out a, a, a bunch of really great questions, and I stack them up and hit— and I'm gonna ask his questions too. So I know he's sitting there going, come on, when are you gonna— um, okay, so we've got one from Alan. For the newbie, how do you know if you have something that is patentable?

So that, you know, as experience— as you get more experience, you can learn a little bit more about what what it takes to make a patent. But I mean, if you're— if you have a company that supports you, usually there's an invention process where you can submit the idea and go through it that way. But if you're just a little inventor on your own trying to know whether to spend your own hard-earned money to go, you know, with a patent, you can actually pay someone to do a formal search of your idea before you invest a lot of money in having a patent lawyer I think if you did a Google search for a patent search, you might find somebody that way, but then you'd probably just do a sentence or two about what your idea is, and they can go and see if there's any prior art and if it exists. And that would help you decide whether or not you want to actually pursue the process of spending thousands on a patent.

Now you got me thinking. I want to go invent something.

Well, you know, I'll be right

back. Hold on.

The recommended search engine to use is DuckDuckGo if you're worried about someone stealing your ideas because they don't keep a history of what you're typing into the search bar. DuckDuckGo.

That's a good one. Thank you. Okay, so we have another one here from the Twitter handle Pay Compliment. I like the Twitter handle. How will the human— how will human needs for social connection be satisfied when we're interacting with things versus coworkers and families.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the whole, you know, moral of my story is that even though we have all these extra technologies, we're supposed to— we should use them to better ourselves as well as still make time for the people that we love. It's funny how I wrote a kid's book about saying to pay attention to life that uses technology, like you use your phone to learn more, but I thought it would bring families closer and You know, have an opportunity for parents to learn with their kids. And it definitely helped with my kids, bringing us closer.

Well, that's great. And you know what, just to tag on to that, Nancy Rubin just said, wouldn't it be great if this was taught in K-12? And I think she's also talking about design thinking as well. But what you're talking about in the book that you just wrote and the theory and the thinking and all that kind of stuff, still it's not in schools today. I don't think so, unless you know something different. to teach kids how to invent, patent, and market their ideas. Why don't we have that, do you think?

I don't know. If I were a teacher, I would be all about it. I read a story recently about this guy that goes and does talks to young kids about inventing, and he took it a step further. I thought this was really cool. So he went and asked everybody to submit their invention ideas, and all the kids would draw a picture of what their idea was. And then they did a vote and they picked the top 10 inventions. And then he paired them with local makers. So all these people in the community came together to make these inventions real. And so a young kid was paired with an adult who likes to do, you know, woodshop or whatever they like to do and made their idea come to life. And I think that is really cool when you take it that extra step of making something not just an idea, not just a drawing on paper, but something physical that you can touch and feel that just gets anybody excited.

It totally does. And I can imagine as a young person, it would be even cooler to go home and tell your mom you just invented something.

Yeah.

Right?

Were you gonna ask a question?

Well, yeah, well, actually, I was gonna make a comment that I think maybe your next book should be called What Could I Invent?

I know, I need to come up with a book related to inventing that's not too trivial, but also not too like lawyer-y. So if you have any ideas, tweet.

I love that you've taken the kids' book route though, because You know, as we do become more connected and we do have more time to spend with our family, it also means that we're going to have more time to think about things critically. And I think teaching our kids critical thinking is so important and not necessarily taught in our traditional education systems today. So I love that you're— you are creating alternative ways for kids to think about a huge topic like the Internet of Things. Like, hello, today we're going to— can you explain to us what the Internet of Things is? Yeah.

Thank you. And that's, that's kind of why I'm so obsessed with Kickstarter in general, is it really is a way for anybody to share their ideas with other people without having a big, you know, budget behind them. Like, it's literally people can preorder my book. So if it doesn't happen, I don't, I don't get any money and I don't make the book happen. But if I reach that funding goal, I have this community of people behind me that made it happen. And I think that's really special and something I really like about Kickstarter.

I was just gonna ask you, JS just asked the question, why Kickstarter? And I'm gonna throw this in, versus other ones out there, why Kickstarter and how did you choose to do that? Although you kind of just sort of answered that, but—

Yeah, I mean, I looked into Indiegogo and that has a little bit of a draw because you get the money regardless of how much you raise, but then you are also on the hook to deliver the product regardless of how much you raise. And if I don't reach my goal, I mean, I probably could convince my husband to put aside some money and we could do this book, but I don't know, there'd be some pushback there. And I think Kickstarter also has the audience that I'm looking for. So a lot of the Kickstarter community, people who are familiar with how Kickstarter works, they're a little on the nerdy side and they understand, probably, you know, will like a book like this because it is nerdy.

Well, and the thing I love about Kickstarter too is that it it really does bring together, I think, the opportunity to get more creative projects out there. I know I had a good friend of mine lives in New York and she's a big 3D experiential artist. Shout out to Beth Solin, by the way, you can look her up. But she went on Kickstarter and did a big campaign for like $60,000 or something.

Oh,

wow. And it's something that, you know, traditional funding, especially today probably would not bring to life. But the fact that there is this big community behind you supporting your creative endeavor, it's— you already have that built-in fan base there as well. And I would think it would keep you accountable to actually deliver the end product.

Yeah, I love providing updates for my backers and sharing a little like insider. I tell them how to go about self-publishing, like if you want to write your own book. Those are the backer-only updates that I do. And yeah, I want them to explore and learn with me and know what it's like to find a printer overseas and doing import costs and all the other things that go around with starting your own business and making a product that's available.

So Mitch Jackson asked what— and he, by the way, he is a lawyer, and he's not just a lawyer, he's actually helping us with some stuff. So he's a great, great person and great lawyer. What invention or patent would Lisa like to see that has not been done? Is that a question that we can even ask you? Are you allowed to tell us like a patent that you—

I was gonna say she'd like, I tell you, but I'd have to kill you.

I know, right? Let's say you could tell us, what would it be if you

could?

Yeah, well, you're probably not surprised to hear that 650 patents are not all in the works. A lot of times it's just the idea and you don't actually create the product. I like to invent around my day job and things I'm working on that I know I can code and make happen, but sometimes I just get inspired by other technologies and I'll submit an idea related to it. So for example, I have a patent that's issued around the Wi-Fi networks in our homes. So a problem that I have, and I'm sure everyone has, is when people come to visit you, the first thing they ask is what your Wi-Fi password is. you know, write it on a piece of paper or stick it on the door and say, here it is right here. But I thought it'd be really cool if when people came to your house, they could sign in or try to connect to your Wi-Fi router through a social network. So it would say, okay, Bryan and I are first-degree friends, so let him on my Wi-Fi network. But me and Bob the plumber are not, so don't let him on my Wi-Fi network. So that idea of using social media to figure your degree of friendship is the patent. Mm-hmm. You could also change how long someone's allowed to use it based on that degree of friendship.

Do you think it would be funny if you came home and there's like 6 cars in your driveway?

Yeah.

And they're all just sitting there logged in.

All your friends are over.

Why not, right? They're your friends.

Yeah.

I would like you to invent a piece of software that analyzes people by what their Wi-Fi password is.

Oh. Or what they name their network.

Yeah, what they name their network.

All of a sudden everyone is named after their dog.

Yeah.

I've seen some pretty creative ones pop up on my phone.

Yeah. OK, so JS, I'm going to get to some of his other questions here. He said, what— let's see, how important will AI be? And what kind of twists can we look forward to in the next 5 years that we haven't seen?

Ah, twists. No, that's a hard one. Yeah. I think that in the next 5 years, you're probably not gonna see anything earth-shattering. You're probably gonna see more AI brought into other environments like your car, for example, and you'll be able to talk to your car instead of having that little dashboard interface. Let's see, you'll probably have it more in public spaces. Right now, it's more at home, a home use thing for the artificial intelligence related to like Alexa and so on. Yeah, I'll go with that.

Yeah, that's good. Good. Okay, so another one. See, I told you JS has all the good ones. So he's a

question hogger.

Yeah, the next one is— and I know why. I kind of know the answer to this because I know you, but I'm sure everybody would love to hear this. What do you like about working at IBM as opposed to perhaps creating your own business and making a

Yeah. Oh, that's a hard one. I so want to start my own business and I have so many ideas. Like, I have a notebook where I write down all of my I'm going to start my own business ideas and I get so excited about them. I'm like, in the middle of the night, I'm up and I'm like, okay. My husband's name is Steve. I'm like, I came up with this idea that I'm going to leave IBM and start— Okay, let's talk through this. So I have a bunch and a few of them, I'm like close that I think it'd be fun to start my own business. I do wanna start my own business and I will someday. It's just finding the right one in the right time and something that's really cool and no one's seen it before.

Yeah, yeah, and it makes it hard when the CEO of IBM has you on stage with her.

I know.

That does make it a little bit harder, I'm sure.

It's better, I don't know if you noticed on my Kickstarter page, there's a quote from Ginni, right? Like, every child should have one. And it's kind of a joke because I was on stage with her and I sent her an email when I launched the campaign and I said, just so you know, I just launched this and I put this quote in from you. And she wrote me the nicest email back, just saying I was a role model and she loves how creative I am. And I thought that was so cool that she personally responded to me. And then I wrote her back and I asked her for a favor. Like, Apple currently doesn't have— hasn't opened NFC yet for developers. So my book for iOS owners, you can't tap the phone. So I did a workaround where you can scan a barcode, but I asked her to put in a word for me about opening up NFC, and she actually put me in touch with someone. So I'm gonna have a conversation. So maybe something will happen.

Wow.

That's really cool that she like helped me.

Oh, that's fantastic.

Because it takes women to get stuff done in this world. That's what it comes down to.

So supportive.

I'm just the third wheel on this one.

Nothing

to see over here. So what is it— how did you go about the app side? How was that process? I mean, you're working on the book, the story, the illustration, and then there's the whole storytelling side of this that is unlike most books that are out there. How was that?

Yeah, so this one doesn't have its own app, but there's a URL on each of the tags. So I did have a website, a standalone website, Oh, I see. And that was actually more difficult than writing the book, trying to find interesting stats. And the thing about it is that it's a living, evolving story, the website. And as technologies change, I plan on updating it to provide more links. And as people, hopefully my backers and other people that read the book, will tell me, oh, I'd like to see this data, or I want to learn more about why this technology works that I didn't see on the website, in which case I can make changes. But it was really interesting for me. I learned a lot reading about all the different technologies, like the Keurig. I have one page about Keurig, and it was saying that in 2014, if you stack all the Keurigs end to end, it would wrap around the Earth 10 times. All the Keurigs. Isn't that crazy?

Oh my god, this is why we have an e-waste problem.

Yeah, it's just like a conversation starter. I can see parents really going in different directions with their kids with all these really interesting things.

So Mitch Jackson asked a question, who do you look up to? Who do you recommend that everybody watches, obviously besides yourself, and pay attention to in 2017 or even a couple years out? Who's, who's doing some great things?

Yeah. I think if you go to my Kickstarter page and look at what people are saying, that list of people, Bryan, you included, who provided me quotes, all of those people on that page I really look to and have all been influencers across Twitter and have tons of followers. And those people are really sharing what is exciting in technology and what you can learn about lately. And I just have learned a ton from watching them. Ginni, of course, is a huge role model for me, and there's other distinguished engineers at IBM that are females that I'm looking up to as well. But definitely check out that page and the people I have listed there.

And we tweeted it out, and thank you, by the way, Lisa. I really appreciate you including me in your list of people. I'm totally honored. But moving forward, how do you see your career just in the next few years evolving?

Yeah, so I am working on getting promoted. I'm always coming up with cool new ideas. And hopefully the technologies that I work on will get me noticed to the point of getting a promotion. So I mean, short term, I plan on staying at IBM. Eventually, I'd love to— if I do stay at IBM, I want to be an IBM Fellow. Which is the highest technical you can get at IBM. I wouldn't mind doing some business stuff as well, like Marie Wieck. She's an IBMer and she, she started out technical and also is a GM. So she— I really look up to her as well. So I wouldn't mind switching over, but I do like staying technical, at least for now. And then, and then I'll start my own business, right?

That sounds like it. Ordinary everyday life plan, right? You

should be able to knock that out in 365 days. Totally. That's great. I, um, I, I know that a lot of the stuff that you're working on is, um, you know, coming up with, uh, as a group effort. You said, but you mentioned before, what, what makes some groups better than others in order to see that final product that you turn in and it just feels like, I mean, I don't know if you've ever golfed, but when you get that one swing that just feels so great and it actually hits so well, right? And so what does that feel like when you're in the perfect group that does, you know, the best brainstorming and comes up with the best product and you just know it's going to turn into a patent? How does that work? What is that? What do you look for to make that hump?

Yeah, that's a good one because sometimes as a software engineer especially, you can't choose your groups, right? You're given who you're given and you kind of have to make the most of it. But I've found in those situations, allowing people to continue doing the things that they're strong at, the technologies they're, they're used to, as opposed to making them do things they're not comfortable with, usually makes the whole team a little more successful. When it comes to patenting, I found that mixing up the groups has made it— keeps everything fresh and keeps a new perspective as new people come and go into the group, and usually leads to more innovations coming from, from that regard. Yeah.

Yeah, well, if you can't pick your team— You

can pick your friend's team.

You can pick your friend's team. Leave it to Courtney. I'm gonna get her a new sign that says derailer.

I'm the dancing banana.

Nice.

Let's see. So I know Jennifer Quinn, she said, are you concerned about— we talked about this before about privacy. And she asked about privacy, but even digging in a little bit deeper, how do you— do you look at privacy when you're turning in any of your your patent submissions? Do you— is that something that you're worried about at that phase, or does privacy come down the road once you have it, once it's been accepted and it starts to become, you know, a real reality? At what point does privacy play an important role?

Yeah, it should from the get-go, right? Thinking about the effects of privacy on whatever your ideas are, but in reality, That's not always the case. You know, you come up with that great idea and then you start thinking about security and privacy and go from there. So yeah, I mean, I try to think about those spaces and it's a lot of room for innovation. So I have a lot of patents in the space of security and privacy, but it's not how everyone feels.

So Lisa, where can everybody find your Kickstarter? Well, actually, we did link out We sent a link out, and thank you, JS. He also sent a link out to your Kickstarter page. But how can everybody help you? Describe the opportunities on the Kickstarter page. What can they do?

Sure. Yeah, so head over to Kickstarter and search for The Internet of Mysterious Things. And one thing people don't realize about Kickstarter is you don't have to choose any of the rewards. So if you wanted to back for $1, You can still get all of the updates and the comments that are going on and follow me and follow the whole process. You don't have to if you don't— if you can't afford a book, maybe you don't have kids and don't really want the book. You can still support in that regard with as little as a dollar. Also sharing it out with your friends and family, that makes a huge difference in just driving eyeballs to the page. The more eyeballs, the better, right? And the more I'll get towards my goal.

Fantastic. So Courtney is literally going to tweet that out right now so everybody has a chance to go check out the page. Is there anything that I didn't ask you or Courtney didn't ask you in the last hour that we should have?

Oh, I forgot to tell you that I made an Alexa skill for the book. So, yeah, so it's kind of a top secret. It's currently under certification review at Amazon. But you'll be able to ask your Echo what the current backer status is on Kickstarter, and it'll tell you that. You'll be able to ask it for a random fact about IoT, and you can even have it read the book to you.

Really?

Wow.

We're going to do that, because we have one in every room of our house. So you're going to be like— you're in our ear all over the place.

Alexa, put Henry to bed. Yeah.

I'll show you mysterious things. So, um, so, okay, so I didn't mean it the way it actually

came

out.

I was like, really? Okay, hold on, we'll be right back.

Um, this is where we say goodbye. On that note, Lisa, thank you so much for, um, for doing this. I really appreciate your time. Uh, and everyone out there, thank you so much for joining us for another H2H Chat. Next week, we are going to have Travis Wright and his co-author Jason, and I can never pronounce his last name, so we'll just leave it at Jason. They're going to be talking about their new book, Digital Sense, and it is an incredible book, mainly because I'm in it. No, I'm kidding. It's an incredible book because they're talking about the balance across channels of marketing and how you balance that and don't go crazy with all the channels that are out there. So if you guys know Travis, he is a bundle of fun and joy. He's gonna be a lot of fun next Monday at noon. Join us for another HHH Chat.

It's our HHH twins. We get twins next week.

We get twins. Lisa, thank you once again. Really appreciate it. Really excited to support your book and keep us, keep us up to date as things go forward.

All right. Thank you guys both for having me. This This was a lot of fun.

Thanks, Lisa.

It was. Thank you, everybody out there. We'll see you again next week on Monday. Cheers.

All right, bye.