A postcard from Nobel Week in Oslo
Sree Sreenivasan
CEO/co-founder, Digimentors ? President, SAJA, South Asian Journalists Assn ? former Chief Digital Officer of NYC, Met Museum, Columbia; Nobel Prize Outreach board ? professional keynote speaker, emcee, moderator
Last week, in the midst of the pandemic’s latest surge, in the shadow of Omicron, I flew into a foreign city in a fresh lockdown. I needed to fly 4,000 miles, take five planes and undergo five Covid tests in six days, but I decided it was all worth it.
After all, it was Oslo during Nobel Prize Week celebrations and a chance to witness history, on behalf of India’s?Scroll.in, as journalists?Maria Ressa?of the Philippines and?Dmitry Muratov?of Russia received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all endangered journalists worldwide.
You can read my epic Twitter thread by clicking below - even if you’re not on Twitter.
The Nobels are celebrated in two cities each year. The Peace Prize in Oslo and all the others in Stockholm. I was honored to cover the 2019 Nobel Week in Stockholm (mainly the Economics laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, whose pioneering work on randomized controlled trials was done with Pratham, the India-based education nonprofit I’m lucky enough to work with, and also to celebrate John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino whose development of the lithium-ion battery is the basis for today’s modern tech). But this was my first time in Norway, Nobels or otherwise.
Journalists are already among the most self-congratulatory and self-examining of all professions, with more prizes, more associations and more navel-gazing than necessary. (I’m guilty of founding multiple orgs and multiple awards programs myself.)
So, it turned out it was more than just journalism being honored when Ressa and Muratov became?the first journalists in 85 years to win the prize.
The wording of the?October announcement reads:
The Nobel Peace Prize 2021 was awarded jointly to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."
Their brave work fighting for the truth and fighting against misinformation and disinformation, even as their colleagues are killed indiscriminately, isn’t about just the media. It’s about making sure we have democracy at a time when the world slides toward authoritarianism, toward right-wing nationalism and worse.
As we have seen in the 20 months of the pandemic, truth and trust have been prime victims of a simultaneously coordinated and haphazard campaign of lies that have extended the crisis and unnecessarily killed hundreds of thousands.
For all our celebrations of the Nobels, we must never forget that?Mahatma Gandhi?never won one. They do pay tribute to him on the Nobel site, with "Mahatma Gandhi, the missing laureate."
SURVEY TIME!?This time of year, we see trendspotting pundits of all kinds making predictions about what the following year is going to be like. This year, instead of just reading such predictions, we want you to help make them. Please take a look at?the first-ever Digimentors Work, Travel and Events. Will take you less than 10 minutes; all participants will be entered in a draw for a?$101 Amazon gift card. Preliminary results will be published in my newsletter next Sunday.
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Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him?@newyorkbob.
Tech Tip: Post-Pandemic Hotels: The Personal Touch Gives Way to Touchscreens
By Robert S. Anthony @newyorkbob
Hugs and handshakes are the stuff of the holiday season, but the Covid-19 pandemic has severely cut into our movements and the number of touchy-feely moments we can safely have. This is bad news for everyone, but for the hospitality industry, it’s been devastating.
However, help seems to be on the way in the form of high-tech kiosks that can minimize human contact and take over many manual, over-the-counter transactions, thus freeing up hotel staffers, which are now in short supply, to handle other duties.
Of course, hotel check-in kiosks are not new. The?Yotel New York, which features?a robot which stores luggage, has had them since its opening in 2011. But the pandemic has triggered a fresh demand for contactless transaction solutions, according to attendees at a recent Samsung hospitality tech showcase in New York.
Samsung is well-known for its mobile electronics, but also commands a major chunk of the touchscreen kiosk market for fast-food restaurants and hotels. At the event, Samsung showed off?a sleek new kiosk?armed with hotel software by Florida-based?Grubbrr, which describes itself as “…a rapidly expanding self-ordering technology startup.”
The Samsung kiosk, which has a 24-inch antimicrobial, shatter-resistant touchscreen, can stand on a pedestal or sit on a table and can handle check-ins and check-outs and many other tasks, including scheduling hotel spa sessions or ordering items from a hotel shop, noted?Jarrett Nasca, Grubbr’s chief revenue officer?(seen in photo above), as he demonstrated the unit. He said the kiosks units can be deployed as needed, like when a major convention or sporting event is in town.
California-based?aavgo?tries to hit the middle ground and maintain some of the human touch with its?Virtual Front Desk, which it bills as “the world’s first contactless, human-assisted virtual front desk for the hospitality industry.” The company showed off the new kiosk at the Boutique Design New York (BDNY) show in November.
Topping the Virtual Front Desk is a 21.5-inch teleconferencing touchscreen?which lets customers see and talk to a hotel representative?as they perform transactions. In addition to basic check-in and check-out tasks, the unit can scan IDs and passports, dispense room key cards, handle card- and tap-based payments and can even take cash. A smartphone app lets users order room service or contact a real person.
While both units can streamline operations at budget and mid-level hotels and those that deal with high volumes, like casino hotels and those near convention centers, high-end, luxury hotel customers need not fear. Those properties won’t be ditching their uniformed curbside greeters and well-dressed staffers for kiosks any time soon. For that market, the human touch is everything.
A word from our friends at Indian Sweets & Spices
From our friends at?India Sweets And Spices
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Here’s a tour of Nobel HQ in Stockholm that I got in 2018 from Magnus Gylje, Chief Digital Officer and EIC of the Nobels.
?? Be sure to check out?“She’s On Call” podcast?with surgeons?Sujana Chandrasekhar, MD?(@DrSujanaENT), and?Marina Kurian, MD?(@MarinaKurian). And the live show on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Accountant (Entry to Mid-Level)| Bookkeeper| Researcher| Ex-PTI |Correspondent|Writer.
3 年Digimentors - an awesome initiative - and kudos to the two fearless spunky journalists Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa for their 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.