Tom Raftery's Weekly Tech for Good Newsletter - Issue #27

Welcome to another edition of my weekly Wednesday newsletter

I have some really excellent stories for you this week, and as always pointers to my most recent podcasts and livestreams

But before that, if you think you're having a bad day - spare a thought for the captain of this huge container ship currently bunging up the Suez canal. Global supply chains depend heavily on access to the Suez Canal and similar choke points - I can see supply chain planners the world over viewing this image and throwing their hands up in despair!

Tech for Good stories of the week

And speaking of supply chains...

3 Strategies To Get The Global Supply Chain Back In Shape — www.forbes.com Home gym equipment sales have skyrocketed during the pandemic. How have supply chains adjusted to address spikes in this type of consumer demand?

Nasa to fly Ingenuity Mars helicopter in early April — www.bbc.com

NASA held a press conference yesterday where they outlined their plans to fly the Ingenuity drone on Mars in the coming weeks - this is going to be fascinating to watch

Tasmania declares itself 100 per cent powered by renewable electricity — reneweconomy-com-au.cdn.ampproject.org

The Tasmanian government has declared that it has become the first Australian state, and one of just a handful of jurisdictions worldwide, to be powered 100% by renewable electricity - and not only that, they have set an aim of being 200% powered by renewables (and selling the excess) - that's how you do it

World's biggest coal company bets on solar power — www.bbc.com

In another indicator that renewables are the new black (!) Coal India, the world’s largest coal mining firm is to "aggressively" pursue solar energy and continue to close smaller mines.

VW brand to halt combustion engine development — www.electrive.com

And in another indicator that the electrification of personal transportation is unstoppable, following Audi’s lead, the Volkswagen brand VW no longer intends to develop new internal combustion engines - they will tweak the ones they have already developed but from here on out all R&D will shift to EV drivetrains

"Insane adventure:" Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter take Porsche Taycan for a spin — thedriven.io

And speaking of EVs, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter the stars of Bill and Ted's excellent adventure (dating myself there) were invited by Porsche to take Porsche's Taycan electric vehicle on a road trip. They made a cool short video of it, and if you like Keanu Reeves, or drifting Porsches, well no more to be said, just check it out

Orange is the new green as Seville turns to fruit juice for electricity — www.euronews.com

Here in Seville, Emasesa a local water company is using oranges (of which there are plenty) to generate electricity!

COVID-19: Science behind Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can be used to give people cancer jabs 'within a couple of years', says co-creator — news.sky.com

And finally, the technology used to develop the Pfizer jab can be applied to get the immune system to take on tumours, says its co-creator.

Digital Supply Chain (DSC) podcast

On the Digital Supply Chain podcast this last week I talked to

• IDC's Jan Burian heads up IDC's Manufacturing Insights team in EMEA and he recently published two interesting articles in IndustryWeek - one on operations managers, and the second on automation, so I invited him on the podcast to talk about automation and digitisation in manufacturing. Check out that episode here

• and in this week's episode on Monday i chatted with Naeem Zafar, CEO & Co-Founder of TeleSense. Naeem is on a mission to digitise the global grain supply chain. You can check out that episode here

Climate 21 podcast

On the Climate 21 podcast this week I talked about sustainability. Why?

• I wanted to have an episode of the podcast where we level set on the importance of sustainability for organisations, so I invited Frank Omare to come on the podcast to frame sustainability from a business perspective. Check out our conversation here

Livestreams

My regular Tuesday Tech for Good went out yesterday but because the clocks went forward in the US many of the regular attendees missed out on the live show

• I put out my regular weekly Tech for Good - live show yesterday, and as ever this week's show went really well. We had lots of great stories (some of which you can see further up in this newsletter - but we went deeper into them in the livestream) and there was great audience participation as well. You can check out the replay here

• And in two week's time on Wednesday April 7th I'm hosting the 5th and final of the Design to Operate: Live livestreams on LinkedIn Live. This episode is all about operations and connected assets, and specifically how connected assets are critical to a sustainable, resilient supply chain. I'll be talking to my colleague Patrick Crampton Thomas live on April 7th at 5pm CET, 11am ET, and 8am PT. Mark your calendars now and you can join us live, or catch the recording if you miss it live here

And finally...

Thanks for your interest and attention. If you like this newsletter, tell a friend. Heck tell all your friends!

And, if you have any comments/questions/suggestions on how to make it better, feel free to let me know :)

Have a great rest of your week