Joy Mountford is an internationally recognized leader in design, particularly human-computer interface, user experience and interaction design. She has built and led world-class design and innovation teams at Apple, Ford Motors, Akamai, Yahoo, and Interval Research. She has designed interfaces for a wide variety of systems including airplane cockpits, computers, the web, consumer electronics, musical instruments, and toys. She is inventor on over 28 key patents, granted in multimedia and human computer interaction. She created the International University Design Expo, which has touched the lives of thousands of design students for more than 20 years. She has given invited presentations at the top conferences in the field including ACM SIGCHI, IDCA, EG, and TED. She receivedWomen in Leadership Award in 2019 and received the SIGCHI Life-Time Practice Award and elected to the CHI Academy in 2012. In 2021 she contributed one of the first 3 invited transcripts covering her life works archived for the Babbage Institute, 2021.

“Joy is a founder of the intellectual and practical elite of design, a design legend" John Maeda – executive, designer, and technologist

"Joy is one of 1000 most creative individuals in U.S." Harry Marks, co-creator of TED conferences

As a pioneer of your field, how did your journey begin that led you to explore the human-computer interface? What led you to explore this field?

As the builders of the future, we are told that what we invest our time in today creates what's next for the children of tomorrow. What is the number 1 thing that today's design thinkers think about differently, and what are some things that may lead to bad experiences?

This is more of an open-ended question. As robots and software continue to interact with humans, such as pizza shops that automatically create pizza, restaurants without servers, self-driving cars, and pilots, human-to-human interaction is replaced for efficiency, consistency, and less interactivity. As humanity continues to find ways to boost Customer Experience (CX) with automation, what's the future that's waiting for us? Do people want consistency and efficiency over interactivity at all costs? And how can the young generations shape the future of work for a better experience for all? What are your thoughts?

Optimism and honesty lead to positive outcomes. Similarly, the purpose and the design of a product don’t mean that the product, when adopted, will be used for the same reasons that it’s designed for; hence you can point to the many stories revolving around Facebook or cup to filter boiled pasta water, what are some of your strategies to collect constructive feedback?

One of the most exciting aspects of predicting the future is that we always think and forecast what will happen but do not focus on what won’t happen. What won’t happen depends on what the innovative and entrepreneurial minds choose not to do in the next few years and where the people do not want change to happen. Given that the world is investing a lot of time and money into the metaverse, it opens new doors for Human and Computer interactivity. New user controls and new ways to experience the world of computers. What are your thoughts on this, particularly around a future where everyone is wearing a helmet and sitting on a couch can be both bright and dark?

George is an entrepreneur, advisor, and technologist who built a start-up in 1999 that focuses on Intelligent Document Processing and data extraction. George was born in Romania, also the home of UiPath. He studied at the first specialized high school for computer programming until he moved to the US in 1991. George dedicated his many years to researching and developing Semantic Technologies, NLP, and AI applications in unstructured content processing. After working as a Software Architect for many years, In 1999, together with his Co-Founders, he started Recognos Inc. where he helped build the platform's AI engine. In April 2018, the platform was acquired by UiPath to create UiPath's Document Understanding capability.

At UiPath, after leading the technology alliances program for many years, he is now taken a lead role as an Evangelist for UiPath. He has seen the technology partners of UiPath, who similarly also build intelligent document processing solutions and beyond. He is one of the founding members of the Romanian American Business Network, whose mission is to bring together people with an interest in the Romanian business environment. Also, he is the Honorary Consul of Romania in San Francisco and is on the board of a few NGOs and startups.

Rob Enslin joined UiPath most recently from Google Cloud, serving as President of Global Customer Operations. In that role, he led global field operations, tripling the size of the sales organization and driving Google Cloud's growth at scale. Enslin also spent 27 years at SAP in various leadership roles across sales and operations. In his final role with SAP, Enslin served as President of Cloud Business Group and Executive Board Member, where he led the development and delivery of SAP's entire portfolio of cloud applications and services, including SAP Concur, SAP Ariba, SAP Customer Experience, SAPSuccessFactors, and the Qualtrics business. In addition, he developed and managed SAP's entire cloud product portfolio, led the field revenue and enablement efforts across multiple geographies, and oversaw core functions, including professional services, ecosystems, channels, and solutions.

Rob has excellent international experience, working in South Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States. Also an avid supporter of youth advancement and development, Enslin has served as the honorary global Chairman of the Els for Autism Golf Challenge.

Some questions we discussed:

How did the journey start that led you to the technology space and then SAP and Google?

You worked at two of the world's largest Tech giants and led their revenue teams to very successful outcomes. My audience would love to learn more about some of your learnings in handling complex challenges and helping the tech giants grow and scale. Can you share your experiences at Google Cloud and SAP, such as building high-performance teams, challenges you faced, and how people adapted and reacted to the change? (Overcoming challenges)

What led you to the RPA World, and what attracted you the most?

Here are two questions that sound like a single one :) Having worked with international teams across the world, like Asia and Europe, what were some observable behaviors that stood out to you about how work is done? And As the future of work is constantly changing with automation and digitalization, now looking back, how would the different cultural backgrounds impact the adoption of digital technologies?

Our community's many entrepreneurs, technologists, and builders create robots, solutions, and products. What would be your one piece of advice for them to keep them motivated and keep going on what they do to be relentless?

As we are inventing the future of work, we are introducing new concepts like telehealth, where patients can speak to doctors over virtual spaces, building remote offices that leverage the global workforce, real-time orchestration that allows delivering vaccines across the US on time, call center agents are faster and deliver better customer experiences, and removing mundane work like reading an invoice. Automation is all around us and expanding into many spaces. In your perspective, where still is untapped?

Todd Schiller is the co-founder and CEO of PixieBrix, a company empowering everyone to customize their web and desktop applications for their use. With their low code platform, you can add a new button that triggers the automation, makes an API call, or change the UI for the UX your employees and customers need.

In today's episode, it was my absolute pleasure and honor to host — the one and only — the Godfather of Process Mining. Prof.dr.ir. Wil van der Aalst is the Chief Scientist of Celonis and a full professor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Process and Data Science (PADS) group. He coined the field of Process Mining, and his research interests include Process Mining, business process and workflow management, process modeling, and analysis. I took his course Process Mining: Data Science in Action in Coursera from the Eindhoven University of Technology a few years ago, which ignited my passion in the field.

As the professor noted in this episode, not many people and companies, including SAP and IBM, believed at the time what this technology could accomplish. They were surprised but did not implement it. There were skeptics and resistance to change. Many enterprises go back to old ways of doing things because it is easier. They denied the transformation that Process Mining could bring to them.

His students in his Process Mining courses branched out and built the Process Mining companies you see worldwide, including; ProcessGold, Celonis, and PAFNow. As the academic field of study transitioned into product companies that aim to sell and bring this unique technology to enterprises worldwide, Process Mining became a vital ingredient of the digital transformation initiatives.

Now, set your clocks to 2022 and watch the news — SAP acquires Signavio, Microsoft acquires Minit, UiPath acquired ProcessGold, and Appian acquired LanaLabs.

The acquisitions are a great testament to the customer’s ask to not focus only on the diagnostics but target execution and actions. By combining the rest of the platforms’ automation, execution, and process management capabilities, enterprises aim to improve their business performance.

Our guest does not need an introduction or marking — The professor is the undisputed Godfather of Process Mining.

In today's episode, we have Ian Barkin. Ian has a deep and decades of expertise in technology, outsourcing, and digital transformation. He is an entrepreneur, author of Intelligent Automation book, and influencer in the intelligent automation space. Ian co-founded Symphony Ventures, one of the earliest RPA (Robotic Process Automation) consultancy, later acquired by SYKES, where he then served as chief strategy and chief marketing officer.

In his career, Ian has partnered with major firms to drive value with intelligent automation and global talent sourcing across numerous industries, including insurance, healthcare, banking, and logistics. He is an active investor in companies shaping the future of work, and currently serves on the board of George Mason University’s RPA Initiative, as well as several disruptive B2B technology companies like Skan.ai.

In today's episode, we have Param Kahlon, the Chief Product Officer at UiPath. Param has been shaping the roadmap of platforms and the products for many years, previously at Microsoft and SAP before joining UiPath.

As the chief product officer, now he shapes the adoption of the future of work technologies like RPA, Process Mining, Test Automation, Analytics, AI, and beyond. The work we do and the processes we interact with during our daily jobs now change based on the work that Param and his team and colleagues at UiPath do. He is a true master of automation.