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[Image: Curbed/Foxtrot]
Curated convenience stores
Foxtrot is a small chain of local convenience stores in Chicago. It is a high-endish place to shop and it does delivery. Their investor thinks that the key to success in the new retail world is providing a superior customer experience in store (curated selection in a pleasant setting) together with a competent local e-commerce delivery network (young men on bikes). It’s the c-store as coffee shop, and in many ways the opposite to Bodega’s vending machine.
Curation helps where shelf space or customer time is limited, so physical retail has always curated selection. Amazon has the luxury of endless shelves, but even they are looking at curation and other forms of discovery because being the Everything Store doesn’t work as well when your customers aren’t sure what they want to buy.
Related: “What if many of [Amazon’s] recent changes reflect not a path to domination, but Amazon’s journey as a more traditional retailer?”
Paying with your data
Students pay the tab at this cafe with their personal data: “For free coffee, students can provide their names, phone numbers, email, majors and interests. This information is then provided to corporate sponsors who want to ‘diversify students' career choices.’”
Internet companies have been providing free products in return for targetable profile data since forever (Google and Facebook being the canonic examples of data factories), but this case is interesting because they’re physical stores and the company is making an explicit deal of it. If you were a privacy-minded student, would you pay some website £1 for a bundle of fake but plausible profile data in order to get a £3 coffee?
The cost of insecurity
A week of security breaches and fines:
In some of these stories, it sounds like security was skimped a bit, but even when it is performed with diligence there are still risks. An organisation’s infosecurity team plays defence and must win every single time in order to remain secure, and the hacker only has to win once. Sadly, this asymmetry suggests that you should assume that your organisation will eventually be hacked. Maybe that affects how you design your approach to data and your business. Can you run your business with less data?
Tesla 🙄
Elon Musk and Tesla to pay $40m to settle SEC case over tweets, and Musk has to step down as chair for three years. Even though that rash tweet cost him 2.2m per word, it looks like he got off lightly. Here is some punchy and funny opinioning on the unhappy futures of Tesla and Snap. A couple of days later, Elon is already publicly criticising the SEC - and his own shareholders for not believing quite enough in the stock.
Other news
You gave Facebook your number for security. They used it for ads - this not great because it erodes trust in security measures.
How to kill your tech industry - “In World War II, Britain invented the electronic computer. By the 1970s, its computing industry had collapsed - thanks to a labor shortage produced by sexism.”
We’re Celebrating our 20th Anniversary Today! - the Co-operative Credit Union. It is International Credit Union Day on 18th October.
“The possibility of stockpiling fresh food is very, very limited” - Tesco on no-deal Brexit risks to fresh food supply chain.
Could Blockchain solve Irish border issue? Answer: nope.
Why the space shuttle’s booster rocket width was the same as a pair of Roman warhorses. Specs (or rather deployed infrastructure) last forever.
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Co-op Digital news
Introducing local.co.uk – Co-op’s new marketplace.
Events
- Delivery community of practice meetup - Mon 8 Oct 1pm at Federation House.
- Engineering community of practice meetup - Mon 8 Oct 1pm at Federation House.
- Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 9 Oct 2pm at Angel Square 12th floor.
- Q3 update from Steve Murrells - Thu 11 Oct 10am at Angel Square.
- Web team show & tell - Thu 11 Oct 11am at Angel Square 8th floor.
- Line management drop-in clinic - Thu 11 Oct 1pm at Federation House.
- Heads of practice community of practice meetup - Thu 11 Oct 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.
- Delivery community of practice meetup - Mon 15 Oct 1pm at Federation House.
- Local.co.uk show & tell - Tue 16 Oct 1pm at Federation House.
- Engineering community of practice meetup - Wed 17 Oct 1pm at Federation House 5th floor.
- Line management drop-in clinic - Thu 18 Oct 1pm at Federation House.
- Heads of practice community of practice meetup - Thu 18 Oct 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.
- Data hackathon - Thu 1 Nov at Federation House.
- Is a co-op right for you? - several sessions in several towns 11 Sep - 27 Nov.
More events at Federation House. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.
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