??Lunchtime Reads: What's a February Face?

?? Welcome to “Lunchtime Reads,” your monthly dispatch from Sterling Communications on what’s new in Silicon Valley and beyond!

?? PR in 2025: The Red Queen's Dilemma

What are the top trends that PR and communications professionals should be aware of in 2025? In this article, we summarized a few takeaways from recent webinars we attended. (Guess what? Everybody’s talking about generative AI.)

??Sterling Spotlight

For the second consecutive year, Canopy is on the New York Digital Health 100 list of standout companies that have helped make New York a capital of healthcare innovation.

Hakkoda was featured in the 2025 Innovators in Artificial Intelligence Professional Services IDC report. Hakkoda also released its own State of Data Report 2025 from a survey of 500 enterprise leaders on emerging trends in AI, cloud adoption, and workflow automation.

Sakuú founder/CEO Robert Bagheri was interviewed in Entrepreneur Middle East magazine about the company’s manufacturing platform for printing battery electrodes, while SVP Arwed Niestroj spoke at TechBlick’s annual battery materials seminar and discussed his key takeaways from the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) in a blog post.

San Jose Water and Santa Clara County FireSafe Council announced an expansion of their network of AI-based wildfire smoke detection sensors to key locations in high-fire risk zones in the Santa Cruz Mountains region.

Veea celebrated its status as a publicly traded company by ringing the opening bell on the Nasdaq Exchange. In addition, its partnership with Lynxspring to accelerate deployment of edge-to-cloud and containerization technologies in smart commercial environments was covered in Edge Industry Review, The Fast Mode, and IT Digest.

?? In the News

• AI company asks job applicants not to use AI to apply?- 404 Media
• Do astronauts do laundry in space??- Mental Floss
• The Doomsday Clock is running out of time?- Vox
• Top takeaways from Davos 2025 -?World Economic Forum
• 100 years of The New Yorker - The New Yorker

?? February Fun Facts

• A “February face” is an unamused, unfriendly, or unpleasant facial expression, “full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.” Credit wordsmith William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
• The centuries-old celebration of Valentine’s Day on February 14th cannot be disparaged as a commercial “Hallmark holiday” as Hallmark only began offering cards in 1913.
• Nylon, the first wholly synthetic fabric, was invented in Dupont laboratories in February 1935 and became a crucial material in World War II for ropes, netting, and parachutes after Asian silk supplies were cut off by the conflict.
• National Battery Day?on February 18th commemorates the 1745 birth of Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, who published his research into “voltaic piles” in 1800 (although Benjamin Franklin coined the term “battery” in 1748).?
• Get to high ground! Seven planets will be visible in the sky at once during the rare planetary alignment of February 28th if you’re in the right viewing spot.
• The purple amethyst is February’s birthstone, and is thought to prevent intoxication (due to its wine-like color) and promote clear thinking.?

??? Mark Your Calendars

• Feb. 16-19 - Information management decision-makers convene in Nashville for the annual ViVE digital health event focused on the business of transformation in healthcare.
• March 3-6 - The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2025 Global Health Conference in Las Vegas will showcase advanced technologies that enhance disease detection, diagnostics, and patient care.?
• March 3-6 -?Barcelona plays host again to the largest event for the mobile technology ecosystem, Mobile World Congress (MWC), where Veea will exhibit its edge computing solutions in Hall 6.
• March 7-15 - Creators, entrepreneurs, and influencers in tech, film, music, and education converge at the SXSW Conference & Festivals in Austin.
• March 9-13 - HumanX gathers “professionals looking to discuss, dissect, and disrupt the AI landscape” in Las Vegas. OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil and Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy are among the speakers.
• March 12-13 - Battery experts will want to join the Li-Ion Cells Dry Coating Manufacturing Virtual Seminar to hear Sakuú CTO Karl Littau.

?? Volunteer Opportunities

• American Red Cross - Book an appointment to donate whole blood and platelets to address a critical shortage related to the Southern California wildfires and winter weather across the U.S.
• Crisis Text Line - Get trained to offer mental health services to people across the country through free, 24/7 support in English and Spanish via text message and web chat.
• Miracle Messages - Volunteer from anywhere in the world as a phone buddy or digital detective to help your unhoused neighbors connect with their families.
• Musicians On Call (MOC) - Give the healing power of music by helping to bring live and recorded music to housebound people and the bedsides of patients, families, and caregivers in healthcare environments.
• National Archives - Unlock U.S. history by becoming a “Citizen Archivist” remote volunteer and help read, transcribe, and tag the 300M digitized historical objects in the National Archives catalog in Washington, D.C.