These days cars and other vehicles pass by billboards that display ads especially targeted for them. These messages can change dynamically depending upon the time of the day or the weather conditions. In short, billboards are becoming smart.

So far out-of-home (OOH) was static. These day the static outdoor ads are being replaced by digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertising. DOOH right now accounts for 6 per cent of OOH sector’s revenues, and the share will soon reach to 24 per cent by 2024. DOOH accounts for Rs.300 crore revenue in 2021.

Bata is using 3D OOH billboard to display its sneakers. HP used programmatic DOOH campaign for its new laptop range. There was identification of peak traffic timings at the location of screen, and the advertising activity was accordingly focused. Hyundai and Renault use billboards to promote their cars . They jump out of the billboards. At Bandra-Worli Sea Link, there is India’s first floating LED outdoor display. Netflix, Prime Video and Hotstar have used it.

Tools such as geofencing and beacons are offered to track and personalise ads. DOOH is being tried at new locations. There is programmatic targeting, 3D and audio. DOOH offers the brands all the advantages of digital online advertising. DOOH adoption in India still lags behind other countries. In Singapore, 60 per cent OOH is digital. The global average is 40 per cent. It is an expensive medium. There are execution level hurdles. All digital screens do not have cameras and sensors to map the surroundings. In Mumbai, still many OOH boards are being converted digital. There are heavy installation costs.

As outdoor’s main aim is to create awareness and engage with a brand, it is difficult to calculate conversions. DOOH is a part of marketing and communication mix. We cannot attribute the conversions to a single channel.

As technology advances, there are metrics to measure its effectiveness.

AI has undergone three generations of progression. First is detection. Here AI detects objects or scenes. Second is recognition where AI comprehends objects or scenes. Third is generation where AI generates human-like text and images. OpenAI models fall into the third category. The first and second generation affects the job market. The third generations mimics the human brain. It poses a risk to human functioning in intellectual fields.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Sam Altman and Elan Musk and others. Elon Musk resigned from the board in 2018. Microsoft and Google are its partners. In 2019, OpenAI released a text-generating ML model called GPT-2 which was trained on eight million web pages containing 1.5 billion parameters. In 2020, the company OpenAI released an ML model called GPT-3 which was more powerful than GPT-2. GPT-3 was trained on 175 billion parameters. OpenAI released in 2022, ChatGPT to produce natural language responses.

In 2021, Open AI raised funding of $1 billion. ChatGPT has been trained on a wide variety of data — books, articles, and journals. Its output may carry copyright material or may violate intellectual property rights (IPRs). It also does not attribute writing to its original sources. There are no citations. Thus it is vulnerable to infringement of the legal rights of others.

ChatGPT has been trained on 570 GB of text, one GB can hold approximately 1000 books of 100 pages each.

The models are vulnerable to attacks that aim to manipulate or deceive them. The model can receive adversarial inputs and could make incorrect predictions. It could be problematic in safety-critical applications.

It is challenging to identify and fix problems or vulnerabilities in them.

There are issues of cybersecurity, spread of misinformation and malware. It is difficult to fix responsibility. Who is responsible — the user, developer or AI?

To overcome the limitations of AI-assisted chats, may be a human being is not enough. AI itself can be used to safeguard threats from generative AI. If there is a hacking tool powered by AI, we can use AI to comprehend its actions.

Microsoft too has partnered with OpenAI to develop ChatGPT. It is an AI offering. It is a large model that could be used in some real-world scenarios. Andrej Karpathy tweeted that 80 per cent of his code is now being written by AI, like Co-pilot. This is phenomenal. It will be used more and more across all domains. It is available as Azure open APIs. Microsoft wants to expand that. Bhashini can use GPT. It has the potential to change the customer service. Nuance has DAX today as an AI product that changes the physician’s works. Microsoft Designer uses DALL-E to help people create designs. In Power Apps one can prompt workflow automation. They can build on Bing putting MS indirect competition with Google.

After TikTok was banned in India, content could be created on Instagram and YouTube, Instagram was initially a photo sharing app which later transformed to include features ranging from Reels, Stories to Notes and much more. Instagram was founded by software engineers Michel Krieger and Kevin Systrom in 2010 to share pictures with filters on. It was bought by Facebook in 2012. By 2018, it has 1 billion plus active users. In India it has 300 million plus active users.

Instagram has given birth to a large number of influencers. It is the most visual platform. In posting to Instagram, you use the skills of a photographer, videographer and editor.

Instagram creators break even with their business as the growth and revenue are quicker. It takes less time and effort to build the audience in comparison to YouTube.

Creators later move to YouTube to build a brand for themselves. YouTube helps to build a loyal community. Many start as vloggers, teachers, gamers, comedians. YouTube turn them into celebrities. YouTube gives them a dedicated audience.

YouTube is attractive because of its revenue sharing programmes.

Though being on both Instagram and YouTube is advantageous, YouTube audience is very supportive and builds a loyal fanbase. Instagram tests your creativity, whereas YouTube makes you reach a larger audience.

YouTube has recently announced its monetisation plan for shorts. Shorts reach out to a casual short form viewers, very different from general audience of more patient viewers.

The only way for creator to survive is to build a community. There is a dilemma here — growth in subscribers and building a loyal community.

There is bound to be a shift from short-form content to long-form. Creators and brands are bound to explore long-term content to expand their reach and keep the audience engaged.

YouTube doubles as search engine. There are views even months after posting a video. YouTube has 467 million users in India. Its creator base is expanding. It has contributed Rs.6800 crore to the GDP, and supported the equivalent of 7 lac full-time jobs.

Amul is an acronym for Anand Milk Union Limited. It is managed by the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF). It follows the co-operative model.

At the village level, there is a village dairy co-operative society. (VDCS). It serves as a milk collection centre. There is a procurement supervisor. He receives milk from the producers. The producers are mostly farmers and cattle rearing villagers. Every village co-operative society has a secretary and chairman. A producer can sell any quantity of milk to the society. Every collection centre has an automatic milk testing machine — it indicates weight, volume, fat and percentage of SNF or milk solids which are not fat. The centre offers the price per litre for given fat and SNF percentages. These parameters are displayed on the screen of the machine at the time of milk collection. The amount payable to the producer is known immediately. It is directly transferred to the milk producer’s bank account by the milk union. The milk thus collected at the centre is taken by a tanker to a chilling centre. A bigger tanker carries milk from the chilling plant to the dairy where it is processed.

The stages can vary in some districts. Milk tankers can visit VDCS twice a day. The milk is tested in a lab at the plants. After clearance, the milk is unloaded, processed and treated.

There are 16.6 million producers in India. There are 185903 VDCSs in India. There are district milk unions or DMUs. And at the apex are the state milk federations. Co-operative network covers 1.96 lac VDCS in India — with a cumulative membership of 17.26 million milk producers.

The DMUs provide VDCSs cattle feed, veterinary services, animal breeding services, rural health services, veterinary doctors to assist milk producers.

The DMUS make products for the Federation. In Gujarat it is under the AMUL brand. The Federation does the marketing distribution. Many states have dairy co-operatives, but none is as popular as Amul.

The surplus or profit made is shared at three levels (after all costs) — at the VDCS level, at the DMU level and at the Federation level. The surplus shared is in addition to the what the producers received for milk sold. The surplus is distributed at the end of the financial year.

Two years more, and Facebook will complete 20 years of its existence. It was set up in 2004 by a group of four students at Harvard University. Then they called it The Facebook. Today it has become a giant organisation headed by Mark Zuckerberg, its creator. As noted earlier, initially it was designed for Harvard University. It dropped ‘The’ from its name, and dropped its exclusivity too. It was involved in a controversy as the twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, both Harvard students, served it a legal notice alleging that Zuckerberg stole their idea of Facebook. In 2008. the case was settled out of court by paying the twins $65 million.

In the meantime, Facebook kept evolving adding new features — Facebook wall and newsfeed. These define the Facebook experience. The popular ‘like’ button was introduced in 2009. Facebook kept pace with the time, and appeared on mobile in 2006. In 2008, its iOS version was introduced.

Soon it emerged as important social media with 500 million users (2010). It went public in 2012, raising $161 million. In 2012, it also bought Instagram, a photosharing app for $1billion in cash and stocks. Facebook considered Instagram as a threat and hence the buy. In 2014, it bought WhatsApp for $19 billion. Metaverse was announced in 2022 beginning its tryst with extended reality. In fact, Facebook has been renamed as Meta. In 2014, Facebook had acquired Oculus VR, a virtual reality company to enhance the personal experience of its users by Oculus VR headset.

Half of the internet users use Facebook (2015). The number of Facebook users is 1.86 billion in 2016. It made a profit of $10 billion, most of it through advertising.

Facebook faced a major storm in Cambridge Analytica scandal which became public in 2018. It was alleged that the private data of millions of users was passed on to Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy firm rendering political advice. The analysis of the data was used to influence the presidential voting in the US (2016) and in Brexit poll. Zuckerberg reiterated its commitment to protect people’s information before the US Congress.

Facebook kept changing its algorithm to keep it focused on family and friends. Of course, though this preserves its core essence, it limits its utility to companies and organisations. Facebook, of late, has faced decline in the time users spend on Facebook. Its user base is plateauing and ageing. It is facing competition from the likes of TikTok.

India with its 490 million users is the biggest Facebook market. Men made up 75 per cent of monthly active users. Women avoid it due to issues of safety and privacy.

It has added Facebook Stories and Facebook Reels to keep it contemporary. It went ahead with a major push towards metaverse, touted as the main pillar that might define Web 3.0. Facebook proposes to devote 20 per cent of its costs to Reality Labs in 2023. As a tech company, it is forward-looking.

In India, there is demand for tech talent in the areas of network engineering, user experience designers and testers, cloud computing experts, data scientists, cybersecurity experts etc. These roles command better pay scales. The salary for an AI professional having four years experience ranges between Rs.5-20 lac per annum. AI professionals with eight years experience can draw up to Rs.35 to Rs.50 lac per annum. Those seniors with 10-plus years of experience in AI earn over Rs.1 crore per annum.

UI/UX designers too earn handsome salaries — Rs.5.5 lac per annum. Cloud specialists on an average earn Rs.15 lac per annum. Cybersecurity professionals earn Rs.10.5 lac per annum.

On account of 5G, there is demand from industries such as manufacturing, healthcare and automobiles.

There is a higher demand for experienced candidates.

There are opportunities in video content, network upgradation and migration, private 5G for enterprises, IoT, network infrastructure and network security.

There is a demand for technical content writers and data science and data analytics experts.

A project consists of a series of tasks to achieve an end goal performed by deploying manpower and resources in a given time frame. It could be a construction project, say building a housing complex or a theatre. It could be construction and commissioning of a manufacturing plant, say a bottling plant for cold drinks. It could be a software project, say computerization of a commercial bank.

A project has a leader or a manager. It is assigned a certain cost. Some activities of a project are linear and consecutive. Some run parallel to other activities. Project Evaluation and Review (PERT) and CPM (Critical Path Method) are the OR techniques to manage a large complex project.

As organisations move towards digital transformation, the importance of project and programme management is increasing. What was considered overhead back office work with heavy process is now considered a means to implement strategy. It carries corporate strategy to top management strategy to middle management strategy to implementation stage. Project management delivers outcomes effectively.

McKinsey has, in a recent study, concluded that out of the top five skills needed in this decade, one skill is project management skills.

PMI (Project Management Implementation) has been founded in IT-IBM in the 1980s which offers certification in this area. The participants are from IT, finance, construction and consultancy.

Project work is fundamental to IT. The implementation of ERP and CRM requires project management. Some models which are physical at present are converted into digital. Programme management is now a big focus for PMI.

There are teams spread across geographies, managing time zones, language and cultural diversity. A project manager leads a specific project. A programme manager considers the bigger picture, and co-ordinates with the different project teams to deliver results. It is a complex team work.

There is a technical side to project management. It involves workflows, roadmaps, schedules and budgets. There is people side consisting of communication, management of stakeholders and change management. These are more complex issues.

There is another certification in risk management. There are disruptions in work, e.g. a Covid pandamic. We have to predict disruptions and spell out the steps to overcome them. The model must have resilience.

The business has to understand the threads in the environment. The competitive scene is to be appreciated. The market must be scanned for the changes. It is all a part of business acumen.

Thus it is a trio of technical skills, HR skills and business acumen.

Microsoft chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella, in a recent visit to India expressed the view that technologies such as cloud and AI will foster innovation, create economic progress and accelerate growth of business in India.

Cloud adoption is a big game changer. It allows the companies to do a ‘lot more with less resources’. Most apps are now built on cloud. It multiplies the value several times. It becomes more energy efficient to move to cloud. It is a hedge against demand uncertainty, as your consumption is only when needed. The three criteria are hedging against energy, demand and cloud native development.

Microsoft has 60-plus regions for cloud. It has 200-plus data centres worldwide. It is determined to make cloud available everywhere. It is investing heavily in cloud.

AI augments every one of us in whatever we are doing. Knowledge workers would be most creative, expressive and productive. Frontline workers would be able to do more knowledge work. Design task — be it software, mechanical, architectural — would be more productive. It will enhance human creativity, ingenuity and productivity across a range of tasks.

Fusion teams bring together software developers and domain experts. Jointly they would build the systems. By 2025, LCNC platforms would be used by 70 percent of app developers. The workforce would be re-energised.