How Blockchain could improve collaboration … – Post

How Blockchain could improve collaboration …
… and Larry King asks the right question

… and Larry King asks the right question

If that title does not tickle your curiosity, It's time for me to go out and live my barman days and write jingles for TV.

Blockchain events are popping up all these days, and last week I spent a day at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in my hometown of Toronto. Like most people in my orbit, I have some feet immersed in this pond, both for business opportunities and for exploring potential collaboration applications. Well, in the "Spinal Tap" style, if the hype cycle of artificial intelligence (AI) is at 10, then it is at 11 with blockchain, and goes higher.

Whatever your concern about the blockchain, they are probably justified, and this event has not really clarified mine. As with any emerging and disruptive force, there are more questions than answers, but more than any others we have seen, this is purely a product of the digital generation.

If that world is not native to you, it will be difficult to understand where the blockchain comes from, just as where it is going. I have much more to say, but this is getting dull, so to keep your interest, I will only share two take aways that I think will be of interest to the readers of No Jitter.

Takeaway # 1 – – How Blockchain can improve collaboration
While blockchain is often associated with cryptocurrencies and allows bad actors to take their business off the web, these same applications can be used for positive results that help both people that organizations get better results. The basic technology is complex – and I'm the wrong man to ask to explain it – but we all deal with security and privacy, and that's what you should think about for collaboration. In human terms, what makes blockchain addictive is the potential to secure trust when using the Internet and to protect our identity when communicating.

We all know that threats that threaten these basic needs are getting worse and as becomes one thing, IA is becoming so good that it will soon be impossible to know for sure who we are talking about, or even who is actually talking about. I'm not saying that the blockchain is tailor-made for this, but as conversational AI becomes a bigger part of collaboration, trust matters more, especially when the chatbots are leading the discussion.

Now take this down or two VoIP, which is the cornerstone of all collaboration platforms in addition to those built around messaging. This will be closer to home for our readers, many of whom will know that VoIP has never been built thinking about security. It is often the weakest link in the data chain, a vulnerability that gave rise to SBCs (Session Border Controller), which are now standard tariffs when companies migrate to IP, mainly for implementations based on premises.

For a variety of reasons, SBCs have not made VoIP totally secure and malicious activities such as call spoofing are easy to perform if security measures are lax. Also, in terms of use cases, there will be collaborative scenarios that are highly sensitive and must be 100% private, or there will simply be situations where some team members are in countries where VoIP it is prohibited or monitored by government agencies. Extend it to mobile workers, who may be using Wi-Fi networks or messaging platforms that are not very secure.

In short, blockchain is a distributed "ledger" that can not be changed and can only be consulted on an authorization basis where all parts are validated. The basics of blockchain require further explanation, but even these fundamental characteristics speak of the intrinsic weaknesses of VoIP, together with the use cases described above, which can be considered fallouts for an effective collaboration.

These ideas may not correspond to the current value of the proposition collaboration, but as the blockchain matures and makes its way into new markets, this space will have its moment. Currently, most blockchain business applications are in supply chain logistics, where value comes from resource monitoring. With cryptocurrencies, blockchain treats tracking transactions and, with the collaboration, will cover the monitoring of communications through data packets. While I have not heard any talk in this regard at the conference, it is not really a big deal to see collaborators who use blockchain at some point as an element of differentiation or added value to make communications truly secure and private.

Continued on page 2: Takeaway n. 2 – Larry King asks the right question