MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Join hosts Joseph Itaya and Anika Jackson as they dive into conversations with leaders and changemakers shaping the future of digital media. Each episode explores the frontier of multimedia, artificial intelligence, marketing, branding, and communication, spotlighting how emerging digital trends and technologies are transforming industries across the globe.
MEDIASCAPE is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. This online master’s program is designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Blockchain, AI, and the Future of Energy with Vivek Bhandari
Prepare to be inspired by the incredible journey of Dr. Vivek Bhandari, a digital changemaker in the energy sector. Vivek's passion for programming and app development during the IT boom of the 90s in Nepal set him on a path toward electrical engineering and eventually led to his role at Powerledger in Australia. His personal experiences with energy scarcity in his home country ignited a determination to innovate in the energy sector. In this episode, Vivek narrates his transformative journey from Nepal to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar and finally to Australia, where he is now at the forefront of revolutionary technology products in energy tracking and trading.
We explore the groundbreaking integration of blockchain technology with energy markets, optimizing the use of renewable energy and creating decentralized, transparent marketplaces. Vivek breaks down how blockchain can create immutable records for energy transactions and discusses future developments like self-sustaining data centers powered by small modular reactors. With initiatives like RE100 pushing corporations toward sustainable practices, this episode offers a glimpse into the future of energy markets and the role of digital innovation in driving these changes.
Beyond technology, Vivek shares his insights on the emerging trends in AI, from enhancing productivity to fostering solopreneurship and even the potential of digital avatars to create enduring legacies. We also delve into the importance of empathy and mindful communication, emphasizing how taking a moment before responding can lead to more harmonious relationships. This episode of Mediascape Insights is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, energy, and human connection, offering practical wisdom and a forward-looking perspective on the future of our energy landscape.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital changemakers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's Digital Media Management Program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2:My next guest started in Nepal, moved to Minnesota and now is located in Australia. Vivek Bhandari, I'm really excited to hear about your journey and all of the amazing achievements that you've accomplished, as well as catching us up to date on what you're doing next and the innovations that you're helping create. So thank you so much for being here on Mediascape.
Speaker 3:Thanks, anika, glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, let's start at the beginning. Share a little bit of your journey going from your home country to the United States. What prompted that move and what were you doing before you moved to the States?
Speaker 3:Sure, so I come from Nepal, pretty small country sandwiched between India and China and influenced heavily by both of those giants. So I started programming in the 90s so when there was this IT boom in trying to do something in that IT boom and creating apps. So I was still in high school and started creating and selling apps to the websites. And you know, at that time the website had just started dial-up modems and you would load yahoocom come back in 20 minutes, it'll load up, but still there were some pop-ups that would come. So at that time I was trying to sell some apps and, yeah, using there. And now, retrospectively, when I think I did create some heuristic, ai-based apps at that time. So it was not called AI, it was just like heuristics, not learning from past, but what it did was based on certain traits, identifying patterns and detecting. An example is I wrote a program, remember, where you could look into the name and say whether it's male or female. So in the form you just add your name and it would just take your sex by default. You could obviously change. So that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:But then later on did engineering. I like being in energy and energy pretty much intrigues me. So I did electrical engineering and, after electrical engineering, worked for a bit in electrical software primarily. And then I got this opportunity with the US government called Fulbright, and Fulbright is one of the prestigious, but at that time they had the top tier of Fulbright called Fulbright Science and Tech. So it started in 2006, I believe, and 2012,. I was the last batch. It was a very expensive program so they stopped afterwards, but their intention was to select the topmost Fulbright every year and from anywhere in the world.
Speaker 3:So in my cohort we were 17 or 16 individuals from around the world in any field in science and tech and engineering and mathematics, any field in science and tech and engineering and mathematics. So I was at that time the only one from Asia, but there were others neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, some guys are in JPL, right now in NASA. So I came with that cohort to do my doctorate and then interesting thing happened. So I started my doctorate in electrical, but then I got, I moved in between, so I went through everything and then it started becoming like oh, this is, you know mathematics and I can always learn mathematics on my own. I just need to rewire my thinking and rewire my brain, because as an engineer, you think binary. So a plane flies or it crashes. There's no intermediate state. But in real world there is. It can glide, it can hover, it can do a lot of things. So I moved to Humphrey Hubert, humphrey vice president they were a school at University of Minnesota preschool so I went there and did my PhD.
Speaker 3:I started working at Siemens from about 2013. And then later on moved to Australia so I was managing their software business for Australia, consulted for some AI firms like Empress. So their parent company are the ones that develop Iron Dome for Israel, but this Empress was bringing that technology to renewable energy. And then right now, for the last about two and a half three years, been with Powerledger. So I manage all the technology products for Powerledger. Powerledger is a blockchain AI company where we develop products for tracking, tracing, trading of electricity, and I'm responsible for all tech and products in Powerledger right now. So that's pretty much a little bit lengthy, but from Nepal to where I am and I'm in Perth, western Australia, right now.
Speaker 2:Wow, yes, this is the end of my day, almost, and the beginning of yours.
Speaker 3:Yes, correct.
Speaker 2:So what inspired you to get into the energy game after having all this other experience?
Speaker 3:Sure. So growing up in a developing country, energy is a very scarce resource and you don't realize it when you're growing up, but it is very scarce. To give you some perspective, when I was studying, 18 hours of to three hours every day, at max up to 18 hours and on an average like 12 to 18 hours. So it's a very scarce resource. You plan your day around that. So if you need to sit in a call with somebody you know after the internet revolution, then you have to plan that. Okay, I'll sit when it's not my power cut. Schedule when you are cooking. You schedule your rice cooker in such a way that you'll only cook it when you have electricity and so on. Right, so it's very scarce and the usage is very, very low.
Speaker 3:So per capita consumption in a developing world is nothing, nothing. So when you look into like the per capita consumption in the developing world versus the developed, like, say, us, it's orders of magnitude more and it's the same human being. It's more or less the same thing that we're doing, but the energy consumption is. There is so much of a divide, like the digital divide and like the AI divide that's coming, there is still this energy divide and 25, 30% don't have access to no electricity or very poor electricity. So that kind of said like I need to do something. And I started in energy and ended up creating some microgrids where it was possible to share, trade electricity amongst two small hydropowers or two villages, communities adjacent to one another. Yeah, and it just started from there.
Speaker 2:That's so fascinating and I know you also have a book, your best-selling author. We talked about this when we first met a few weeks ago. Will you tell us a little bit about your book and how it plays into the field that you work in?
Speaker 3:Sure. So in the book it's got a nice story why I wrote it. So I was teaching at University of Minnesota and when I was teaching at University of Minnesota the course that I was teaching was on policy, school policy and management school and the students would be, you know, there would be mayors of the city who want to know about energy, so some people would drive two, three hours to attend that lecture. Some would be like fresh out of college graduate electrical engineers, others would be chemical engineers. So there was very, very diverse. Some would be from School of McCarlson, school of Management. So that diverse set of individuals it was always hard for me to bring. First. I need to bring everybody to the same level playing field and then start teaching so that they are informed equally. So it was a big task and I did it for about three years, every fall semesters and I felt I could not rely on anything to teach that. So I started creating materials on my own, the course on my own and all of that.
Speaker 3:And then while I was in Minnesota I found another guy, rao Konidena. So he used to work in MISO, so Mid-Continent ISO Independent System Operator that operates the grid from, you know, down of Canada, from about Minnesota to north of Texas, that whole Midwest, so they operate that. And he told me a similar thing, like he was taking in graduate students to work for him and every time they knew nothing about they had degrees but they knew nothing about how this thing actually works. So he also had prepared a lot of things, a lot of materials for training these newcomers that would come into this ISO where he worked. And then we said like, oh, there is a common theme. So, and COVID happened. I was in Australia at that time. Okay, so COVID has happened where we are staying, and we wrote quite a few books, sorry, quite a few articles together. So we said like, let's write a book.
Speaker 3:And then we ended up writing a book. It's a big book, it's taught in lots of universities and a user reference in a lot of others. It goes anywhere from. You know you have no background whatsoever in engineering, so it goes with very basic of energy and how it works. What are the fundamentals? First couple of chapters fundamentals of economics, because engineering and energy is very much tied to economics. So it goes from there to how do you actually make a policy reform and because you know you need to bring in new renewable policies. You need to bring all these policies. How do you make that policy? Reform to the last chapter ends with energy poverty, so the 18 hours of power cut and actually the innovation that is happening in that part of the world compared to the west. So it just combines 10 11 chapters, very, very, very diverse. Basic but graduate level book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is a big book. It is, I was looking at it, but I love the way you just explained it, so anybody, at any level, can pick it up and be able to synthesize and learn.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, absolutely. And the other thing that we also try to focus is anybody can pick up any chapters, so the chapters itself are also, you know, independent, quite significantly independent than one another. There will be references, but we try to limit that as much as possible so that you can just pick up one chapter and that's self-contained and self-sustaining.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what is the book's name?
Speaker 3:Oh, it's very long. So Modern Energy Systems Engineering, Operations and Policy.
Speaker 2:Wonderful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's big and I might have missed one word here and there, so it's been a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Well, we will also make sure to link to the title to the Amazon for people to purchase if they're interested. Now I'm really intrigued by this intersection of blockchain and energy and how you've created the technology to work in these two fields, so will you talk to us a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so blockchain is very interesting, right? So, in lack of a better word, it's a distributed ledger where once you enter some data, it just stays there until you turn off the computer, right? So if you turn off the computer then it'll still be there, but you need to turn it back up again, so it's immutable. Records are created and I saw, when I started working with Power Ledger, quite a good intersection between application of blockchain and energy. So, you know, you and I, anika, could be neighbors, and right now you might have a solar panel and maybe I don't, and what would happen is your electricity, or your electron, by default, by virtue of physics, would come out of your house if you are not consuming enough, and then go out in that wire and then, because I'm the next door neighbor, it'll likely come into my house because I'm using, just by the physics of it, right, but there is no mechanism to make sure, or no adequate mechanism to make sure, that we can layer some capitalism or layer some market on top and change that behavior and compensate for me to provide you with that electron. And you, maybe you want my electron, compared to the grid electron, because I'm your neighbor, you like me, or maybe it's just that you like renewables or whatever is the reason right. So creating that market and blockchain is really good at creating those marketplaces, creating those records, and if you are buying something from Vivek, it would be really good if you can say that yes, this came from Vivek and have that record permanently and not just because somebody believes that it came from Vivek. So creating those records in the blockchain and creating that fundamental market transaction layer is a very good application of blockchain. So that's where PowerLaser came into merging those two ideas together and use a blockchain for energy and environmental commodities trading by creating these immutable records.
Speaker 3:And then the energy. The other thing is it's also in the early days of blockchain not anymore for most of the protocols, but they were one of the largest energy consumers and they still are in the proof of work type places, and they were hounded like, oh you know, the world is getting destroyed, like you're using so much computation power in blockchain. Now they've grown significantly efficient, with Ethereum's new versions coming out, solana's, cardano's and so on, but still they are consuming. And then the same parallel can be drawn on AI and AI.
Speaker 3:The computation power is roughly doubling, I would say, every 100 days these days and because it is doubling so much, it requires lots of energy and I can pretty much say, you know not just the developing country, but say, in the next two, three years, the consumption AI consumption would be probably bigger than the entire consumption of places like Netherlands, right? So the consumption is really really big and same trend. But what you can do is you can strategically place these loads in lack of a better word which are AI data centers or blockchain data centers and help the grid and help the environment. So use blockchain for trading, placing them in right places in the grid so that the grid is optimized and it's a win-win-win for everybody. So those kind of things kind of intrigues me and still is intriguing me.
Speaker 2:And you started answering the next question, which was AI, knowing that, the ethics of AI, and even you know who's labeling images and words for Gen AI, but also the energy consumption, because that's what we're hearing right now is it's so energy? You know we're all using it and it's going to continue getting better and better, but there is that big ethical consideration for the energy consumption side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so it's highly energy intensive, but that may not be a bad thing. It could be a bad thing for the environment if it is heavily consuming energy from, say, coal right, but you can do things in such a way that maybe it will not consume from coal. And you can do that by strategically placing these data centers next to a solar, because if you need to build one, why don't you build next to a solar power plant or wind and just buy a PPA from those? The roof of this data center completely cover them with solar as an example, if there is a space available, so you can do those things to make it more green AI and I can see that happening in the next couple of years, where probably the greenness of AI will also be a thing, and it'll be something like my workload is X percent green, so you can probably minutely go into your workload. And I asked a question. So, yes, I use perplexity AI from writing quotes, so I can probably say like, oh, I want to use this non-clean workload, create this non-clean workload or clean workload for some efficiency gain or some financial gain or financial loss and so on. So those kinds of things would also come and it'll only get better and if you do it in the right way.
Speaker 3:So what is also happening in the energy system is because these solar and wind are so unpredictable you can't predict them more than 15, 20 minutes, half an hour in advance. So, because you have a large solar farm, cloud comes when it comes, like you can't control them and it just is there, right. So what happens is, in lots of countries, the best way that the grid operator is managing them, including in Australia, is to curtail them. So my rooftop solar in my house right now, if I'm not consuming adequately enough and if it is creating some minor disturbance to the grid, they'll just turn it off.
Speaker 3:Okay, so it's a punitive message. So this energy could potentially be drained into utilizing AI workloads or blockchain workloads, like whatever in the productive workloads, right? So that kind of thing is still missing and that would definitely remove these ethical considerations of using clean versus non-clean AI, and it can definitely be a lot clean. But ultimately, probably what will happen in 10 years from now is maybe like I see a future where small modular reactors, micro reactors, would be placed next to a data center and would be enough to power that data center and that data center becomes self-sustaining by itself and it's all clean.
Speaker 2:Wow, what do you think will need to drive companies and corporations to do what you're saying? Because it sounds fantastic, but also I'm an idealist and optimist. Right, it sounds very optimistic. So what do you think are some of the drivers that will help motivate companies to actually implement your suggestions?
Speaker 3:So most of them. So there is this RE100, renewable Energy 100 companies, top fortune companies that have some commitment towards being net zero by X date so 2030 as an example, right. So they have that commitment and they would need to act on that commitment. So they probably have not factored AI when they made this commitment, but now that AI has come, they need to cover this AI and the environmental damages that AI might cause and go into. So there is this voluntary commitment that is already there. So RE100.
Speaker 3:And there is also another movement called 24-7 CFE, so 24-7 carbon free energy, which is very interesting. So what it says is it's not enough to say that I am green, you have to say that I am green at this point in this place. So bring the time and space attribute. When you're saying green, the reason is so, say, we are using some AI right now and I can buy credits from Africa to claim my greenness today. That's possible, but ideally, what needs to happen is I need to be able to buy credits generated in or near Perth, because I'm using this energy right now, at this time, and you need to buy it in the States around that reason right. So that 24-7, so it may not be possible for the next 20, 40 years for individuals, but Microsofts of the world, googles of the world and so on can do that. So these commitments and doubling down and tripling up on these commitments is the way how this will happen, and I'm very optimistic that this will happen by 2030.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, wow. That's very exciting utility for blockchain, not just for energy, but for other things moving forward that we haven't even well, we haven't thought about, but perhaps you have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the use cases are immense for blockchain, right? So energy use cases are just one of those use cases. Take social media as an example. So social media everything is concentrated to the Facebooks, twitters of the world and they are pretty much a monopoly that control everything and we're just a consumer. And in software development, there is this famous saying that if you don't pay for a product, you are the product. Right, so we are the product of social media right now.
Speaker 3:Now, with blockchain, what you can also do is create a data sovereignty and create a decentralized ID and uniquely say that this is Anika and very discreetly, and that can only be because this has been signed by her right, so it's decentralized way of saying that. And what you can expand to that is now you'd have the capacity to share your data with anyone you want or you don't want. Now Facebook needs to come. Or some say imagine a decentralized social media where there is a decentralized, nobody runs it, but this community that would run it would need to ask your permission and say that okay, so I want your data to run this and I'm gaining $5 per byte or whatever that thing is. I'm willing to share two with you. Would you be willing to share your data, then you'd say yes, I want to, or no, I don't. So it's a choice. So you would make that informed choice, compared to today where you and I, we have no clue. Now I've talked about social media. Very likely I'll start seeing ads about social media from tonight. So we don't know where that data is, who's, if anyone is spying or not spying, or if I'm searching and that cash is being used or however it is used.
Speaker 3:So social media, decentralized social media is a pretty big time application of utility, of blockchain. Another one there is a project in Solana. It's called Hype Mapper. So what they do is they provide you with a device that you can put it in your car and when you are driving it'll start creating maps and it'll reward you for creating those maps. So it's decentralized Google Maps on steroids. There are other smaller projects where, for example, wi-fi sharing so your Wi-Fi, my Wi-Fi, is always there. But what if we create a network where we share our Wi-Fi securely with somebody who wants to use it and get paid for that right? So these kinds of utilities are very much immersing in blockchain and they have lots of utilities.
Speaker 3:It will take time, like with any innovation. The one parallel that I draw is maybe when operating system was being formed in early 50s, 60s, whenever it was, people used to talk about all the bits and bytes and we remember turning on the computer, add its own music, that would come, the sound, the time and so on right. So it was more about the technology, that depth of the technology. It was not about the user experience. Blockchain needs to crack that user experience because everyday people don't know much about it. They don't know how to use it. But there will be a time and I'm also positive on this where it'll be like an operating system. We'll just work on the background but we will just gain the benefits of it with decentralized apps, dapps or with other means.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, thank you. I do have some more questions about AI, but first I wanted to ask how is it going with your current company? Are you having to do a lot of education? Are corporations signing up and saying yes?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there is a lot of education. It's a new concept, right? So electricity or utility is the last person that you want to interact with. You just pay your bills and that's pretty much it. So, creating this interactive environment, there is a lot of education required, but there has been some significant strides. Good examples are Palazzo has a project in Austria with a company called Energies Tiremark, and Energies Tiremark is creating this sharing trading mechanism for its users. And another project in France where a retailer. What they do is they allow, they're in Paris and they allow their users to choose their energy mix. So you can say that tomorrow at 5pm, I want my energy to come from that solar, but not that hydro, wow. And that record is in the blockchain, so it becomes an immutable record and they charge the premium and you may have that power of choice for various reasons. You might have invested in that solar farm, so you want to promote that or you just like that. Whatever is the reason environmental reason but you're choosing and you pay for that Green EVs. So you are matching renewable generation to EVs and creating a certificate is another use case. So there are so many of these use cases that are coming.
Speaker 3:Europe is relatively advanced, where they have this regulation called clean energy package in EU, and then Switzerland also did a referendum and they also allow for this kind of sharing training of electricity. India is catching up, interestingly. So India has a state called Uttar Pradesh, the largest one where they have mandated blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading. Delhi recently came out with a regulation. There are a couple of other states that have lined up to implement this blockchain-based peer-to-peer energy trading. So India and Europe are relatively advanced.
Speaker 3:Australia there is nothing preventing for making this happen, no regulation but it has not picked up as much. Us there are some preventions because you need to be a utility to say a trade. Anyone else cannot. So US is a bit behind. So what we are doing to answer your question is there is a lot of education especially when I'm traveling to the US, it's mostly education on.
Speaker 3:You can do it this way, like not just in energy trading, environmental commodity trading too, right so where, right now, most of the trade is happening over the counter. So when you want to buy a carbon credit or renewable energy certificate, you will call a broker and that broker will say you know, $2 per REC or carbon credits and this much, and do you want to buy and then you say yes or no, but you don't see the whole market. So creating that blockchain base. We've got a marketplace running in the Midwest right now, so that creates a transparent mechanism where buyers can come and buy from the marketplace, sellers can come and buy from, sell from in the marketplace. So creating that. But again, a lot of education is required. Having said that, powerlaser is present in around like 12, 14 countries, doing lots of projects with lots of utilities and non-utilities, so it's very exciting time.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. I had a conversation last week with somebody who said eventually we're all going to have our own AIs, right? So our own personal assistant who just will make a phone call for us or leave a message for somebody or put something in our calendar or whatever the case may be, you know, reorder things. So instead of having to go through Alexa, we'll have our own that we can name. I thought that was a really interesting concept and it is something I can see. I think that technology is probably already here and just isn't being utilized yet, but I'd love to hear your perspective on other things that may be happening. Where do you see AI going and taking us? And, of course, we have the question of it's a tool but some people get very scared about. Are their jobs going to go away Because we have seen certain industries be slightly replaced by AI?
Speaker 3:Yeah, likely, some of the jobs will go away, but it's not the end of the day, right. So there will be other jobs that will be created to compensate for that. Be other jobs that will be created to compensate for that, but applications, it's immense. I'll give my example. I needed to try out something with optimization last week, so optimizing wind farms, and so I used to be a developer in the past, so that project is pretty much a six-month project for me if I were to sit down and do it. And so with AI, I was able to create that entire program in probably like three days, and I was just treating AI as my engineer and just giving them instructions like do this, do this, change this, do this, do that, do that, and within three days I've got an operational program, a functional program. It's like an MVP. So what that means is now I see a lot of solopreneurship coming. If people can generate their own programs, why do you need a batch of 10 developers to do it right? So you may need one or two. You may need to have some technical know-how to challenge the code that has been written, but you don't need that, so it will go there. The other thing that I also say and I was just before this call was in LinkedIn and looking at a professor from Kellogg School and he was talking about digital avatars and I see that taking off. So where you create your digital avatar and maybe you can even stretch it to, then people live forever digitally. So you train with your articles, you train with your posts, you train with your videos and audios and then it just lives there forever and it's not just your agent, but it is your pseudo, you who is living in a digital world until somebody deletes that. So that is there and productivity improvement is so, so, so immense.
Speaker 3:My daughter is eight years old, so I sent her to and there are AI schools for kids, interestingly so I sent her into an AI school, like a camp, for two days. One day she came back and she had learned how to train a model Okay, so she could show pictures and videos and download that model, that trained model. The other day she came back and she could create a comic book using Canva and image generation from the likes of DALL-E or whatever image generation tools. So she could create a very decent comic book in about 20 minutes roughly. And I was imagining like, oh, if I were to do that when I was eight years old, no, I could not, and even without that AI. If I were to do that when I was eight years old, no, I could not.
Speaker 3:And even without that AI if I were to do it right now it's a week to week of project just to do that, and now an eight year old can do it in 20, 30 minutes, right. So you can see that immense jump or leapfrogging in productivity that is happening. But now, when C will grow up, I'm pretty sure the jobs that used to take two, three weeks to create that comic book will be lesser and lesser. But there will be more jobs to use AI to create those comic books, if comic books are still a thing. So some sectors will definitely shrink, but there'll be others that will be created and it'll just become a norm strength, but there'll be others that will be created and it'll just become a norm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's one thing I hear often is that tools won't take your job, but if you don't understand how to use the tools for productivity, you won't have a job in the future.
Speaker 3:A hundred percent, a hundred percent agree.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear some of the through lines that, through your entire career, what are some things that you've had to take with you, whether it's emotional intelligence, working with teams, being able to future think?
Speaker 3:So emotional intelligence is an interesting one, so it's probably one of the most underrated skills. So whenever you are looking for a job or talking to somebody, they don't seem to talk about emotional intelligence, but it's very, very important skill to have Reading somebody else that you're talking with, understanding them, being empathetic, trying to put yourself in their shoes and trying to understand. So these things are the key skills that are required for future. Another thing that I have learned throughout my career is the next generation should learn to build and sell. So build what you need to build. You need to be able to build it more or less by yourself or maybe one other friend of yours, and sell.
Speaker 3:So, whether it be selling whatever you build, selling yourself, selling whatever it is. So you need to learn these two sales and marketing skills and building skills and it becomes like the fundamental skills that would be required throughout and when tied with being empathetic, thinking more about and putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, those kinds of soft skills are the skills that would be required, and developing them are absolutely needed. What is not needed is coding 100%. It's not needed so hard skills. They will be replaced sooner than later.
Speaker 2:Interesting. This has been such a fun, candid conversation. We've covered a lot of material here and I very much appreciate your time knowing that we're recording this on a Tuesday afternoon for me and a Wednesday morning for you. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you really want to emphasize to the audience?
Speaker 3:So what we have covered, but the audience who's listening to this? Ai is there and blockchain is there. These techs are there to stay and, like you said, you need to learn them and you need to be able to use them and improve your productivity and improve the lives of others and just increase the social surplus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for that. And Vivek, how do people connect with you?
Speaker 3:Through LinkedIn. I'm very active at LinkedIn. I also have Twitter, but I'm not as active in Twitter. To connect with me in LinkedIn, if you look for Vivek Bhandari, you'll pretty much get me, you'll see me and I'm very, very active there, so that's the best way to connect with me?
Speaker 2:Fantastic. And do you have one quote, mantra, words of wisdom, things that help you continue to do the work that you do, whether it's in your family life or with your world of work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so being empathetic is something, a mantra that I absolutely do and one mantra. So it's not a mantra, but it is a good practice. So whenever I disagree with someone, I don't text, so I wait, or email, I wait until tomorrow if that is still a problem for me tomorrow, only then I write back, otherwise I don't. So trying to think on why did they do this, why did they ask for this, and trying to put yourself in other's shoes has really helped me and that is a mantra for life.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and this conversation, and thank you to everybody who's watching or listening to this episode of Mediascape Insights from Digital Changemakers sponsored by USC Annenberg's Masters in Digital Media Management program. We'll be back again next week with another amazing guest.
Speaker 1:To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital Media Management program, visit us on the web at dmmuscedu.
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