Departure Unknown - The Future Of Transportation

This is a great conversation with Steven Greenway who is the president of Swoop Airlines. Swoop is an ultra low cost airline is based out of Canada. We cover many topics from the business case behind ultra low cost, Steven’s vast experience in the sector, and what motivation and service mean in ultra low cost flying.

Is this the airport of the future? One that changes the business model of the airport and turns the uniqueness of an airport to turn it into a driver for innovation. Munich Lab Campus is an ambitious initiative for the Munich Airport and here is my conversation with Sara Wittlieb is the VP of Innovation for Munich Lab Campus. linkedin.com/in/sarah-wittlieb-80b77ba8 https://www.munich-airport.com/welcome-to-the-laboratory-of-ideas-3717676

Frank Bunger is the CEO and Founder of Orion Span, Inc. Frank has a vision to create a luxury space travel experience on Orion Spans’s Aurora Station. We cover many topics from safety, to regulations and even what food will be served! It is a fascinating topic and a conversation I am sure you will enjoy.

Season 2 wrap up with Peter Torellas. Peter has led innovation and growth for the transportation and urban energy sectors for cities. He joins me in a wrap up discussion where we have identified our top three insights across all the episodes and we look at a big idea that is shaping the future of ….everything.   If you would like information on the next season please make your way to www.departureunknown.com and sign up on the mailing list.

This is episode 7 in a series of 8 where I have the great opportunity to speak with Sampo Haitanen who is the CEO of  MAAS Global, based out of Finland, and the creator of the Whim app. I am a firm believer that a big part of our mobility future will be built around mobility as a service. It already is in the airline industry so automation will make it happen in our neighborhoods as well. You could say that Sampo and his team at MAAS Global are on the forefront of this new era and are either in the right place at the right time or are just a bit early. Only time will tell.  

This is episode 6 in a series of 8 where I am looking at future products and services affecting both on the ground mobility and up in the air mobility. Today we are on the ground in definitely one of the more fun products I have come across in awhile. Grant Delgatty is the Chief Creative Officer , Co –Founder and designer of Urb-E. Built in LA, URB-E is the a very compact and lightweight foldable electric vehicle. It is classified as a bicycle so you can ride it anywhere a bicycle is allowed. Also what I found compelling is that it is approved to be used on subways and buses. Universities around the US are embracing the vehicle and here in Los Angeles URB-E is officially partnered with Metro and Metrolink. I recorded this interview a few months back and according to the latest update on their website they have now sold more than 5000 urb-es to owners in more than 30 countries in the world. I really enjoyed this discussion with Grant because it is much more than an interview about a mode of transportation but

This discussion represents an important piece of the mobility puzzle that actually straddles both the up in the air and on the ground worlds…airports. Ryan Ghee is the Editor at Future Travel Experience. You may have heard me speak about FTE in the past as I am a big supporter of the work that Ryan, Daniel and the team do to create fascinating events all over the world in addition to keep us up to date on all of the latest news affecting airlines and airports through their newsletter. Ryan has inside access to airports, airlines , governments and companies all over the world who are working very hard to make the airport experience better.

This is the fourth episode in a series of 8 interviews where I look at the future of transportation through two lenses. How we move on the ground and how we move in the air. The goal is to look at two different yet more and more similar industries and suss out some insights or opportunities for the future. In the final episode of this series I will be joined by an expert across the industries and together we will look at the real challenges and potential successes coming to the mobility industry. This episode keeps us on the ground in a fascinating discussion with Josh Hartung the Co-Founder and CEO of Polysync. Polysync is a software company at the center of autonomous vehicle development. Before we begin, Josh refers to First Principle a few times in the discussion. First principles is essentially boiling down a problem to its most basic assumptions. In Josh’s case if the goal is safety then the first principle for the code or operating systems they are developing is that it is fundamentally safe. That all

Urban Us is a venture capital firm that invests in start ups that re-imagine city life. In addition they are part of the team, along with Mini,  behind urban x which is an accelerator for urban tech. Today’s conversation is with Stonly Baptiste. Stonly is co-founder and partner at Urban.us. When I first met Stonly he gave me well needed perspective on the sheer impact that city focused solutions has on the world…so I asked that we kick off our conversation with that exact topic…  

This interview is with Bonny Simi, President of jetBlue Tech Ventures. This is the second in a series of 8 interviews where I am speaking with changemakers who are shaping how we move ourselves in the air and on the ground. If you had the chance to listen to the last interview with Ashish Kumar from Zunum, Bonny’s team at jetBlue Tech Ventures is an early stage investor in Zunum Aero. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Bonny as she dives in the details on how jetBlue is investing in the future of air travel.

Ashish Kumar is CEO and co Founder of Zunum aero. Zunum is making electric commercial aircraft a reality. They are backed by Boeing’s Horizon x and Jet Blue Tech Ventures. Which strategically means this new aircraft is backed by one of the two major aircraft manufactueres and by one of the more forward thinking airlines in the world. Not too bad at all!  When I first met Ashish I was really impressed by his ability to draw from historical datapoints that really show where big opportunity lies for electric aircraft and more importantly how this can affect the entire air travel ecosystem in ways that make perfect sense.

Wow, if you haven’t noticed this has been an incredible 6 months for the mobility industry. Major disruption is on the horizon and everyone, OEMs, VCs, start ups, and government officials are waking up to the impending wave of change coming our way. It is still the wild west right now with future mobility tech and I am going to tackle my next interviews a bit differently. This first season of the podcast was great. I spoke to experts in AI, Airports, Passenger experience, Smart cities and more. What I found is that by looking at the automotive world through the aviation lens and vice versa was able to see some fascinating parallels that have helped me gain a deeper insight into what’s next and what to watch out for. In this upcoming season I will be interviewing leaders and experts from Autonomous vehicle technologies, Aerospace, Corporate Venture, last mile solutions and more. I will divide the experts into two categories On the ground and Up in the air. Then in the last episode I will be joined by another m

Every January a few hundred thousand people from all over the world swarm two cities that could not be more different. Las Vegas and Detroit. 10 years ago, linking what happens in one having an effect on the other would have been tough to do. But now, CES (the consumer electronics show) and the Detroit Auto Show are tied together in the presentation of the future and the present in the automotive industry.   Car manufacturers and the like have been leveraging CES’ technology positioning to show off new vehicles, concept vehicles and announce interesting strategic alliances that will shape how we will get from A to B in the near future. Because of all the considerable amount of buzz around the month of January I am going to do something different in this episode. This will be a brief overview of some of the products, alliances or news that bubbled up to the surface during these past few weeks. Just me this week but I have reached out to my network to see what resonated the most and why and this is what popped

www.departureunknown.com garen@departureunknown.com  The internet of things has changed our world. Once inanimate objects are now awake. Light bulbs, dishwashers, ovens, cars, thermostats...all in  endless communication between themselves in an effort to be more efficient. As this has begun to revolutionize our homes there is an equal revolution happening outside your door. Over the past few years many cities around the world have been spending billions connecting their municipal services in an effort to turn what used to be called a forward thinking city…into a smart city. Based in Brooklyn, Urban X invests in and accelerates startups who are focused on intelligent cities, urban hyper growth and society-scale challenges. Urban X is a joint venture between Mini and Hax Futures, an investment company specializing in hardware. In this episode I speak with Micah Kotch, the managing Director at Urban X. How to get in touch with Micah Kotch @cleantechnyc hello@urban-x.com   If you only have a few minutes: Policies

www.departureunknown.com garen@departureunknown.com Back in 2014 Vice President Joe Biden, in a speech on American Infrastructure, compared LaGuardia airport to a third world country. Fast forward 2 years the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo was joined by Joe Biden at the ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the complete rebuild of the airport. This is a 4 Billion dollar undertaking and is the US’s largest public private partnership in history. The redevelopment project will completely reconstruct terminal B and transform LaGuardia Airport into a single unified main terminal with expanded transportation access, increased taxiway space and best-in class passenger amenities. In September of this year I had the opportunity to sit on a Future Travel Experience Think tank with Ed Baklor, who is now the Chief Commercial Officer at The LaGuardia Gateway Partners, the privately owned company who is managing the redevelopment and servicing of the LaGuardia airport. When I met Ed he was Senior Vice Presid

Depatureunknown.com My most recent interviews were with experts in AI and immediately after finishing my discussions with Chris Noessel from IBM and Yves Bergquist from the USC Entertainment Technology Center my opportunity nose, whatever that is, wanted to sniff out more around the role of service in the future of transportation. You see, it is very easy to speak about the future in terms of technology – self driving cars, hyperloop, supersonic jets…but in reality there are very few companies who will be successful creating these capital intensive products. When you think about what will happen when we all have cars, planes or drones shuttling us around on demand service becomes the most important differentiator between your mobility service or mine. When you take a flight from LA to London you have a myriad of choices. Economy seats, business class lie flat seats, on board chefs, on board nannies, better movie selections and worse movie selections, friendlier cabin crew or colder cabin crew…all these elemen

www.departureunknown.com Yves Bergquist is the CEO of Novamente and Director of the Data & Analytics project at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC. Novamente provides custom Artificial General Intelligence development for a variety of customers across a wide variety of areas like national security, data mining, finance, text mining, natural language processing, biomedical, robotics, and many more. Yves is a mild mannered powerhouse. In addition to all that I mentioned above he was part of the founding team at Singularity University. Yves gives me an insider’s look to artificial intelligence and where he sees the greatest impact of the technology in our day to day. An interesting topic we touch on that I have not heard much is the looming reality that artificial intelligence can actually take peoples jobs. We do touch on the theoretical implications of AI but Yves is quick to shed light on what actionable today is using AI.  With that in mind I would suggest that during the episode you think of all

www.departureunknown.com Chris Noessel is Head of Design for IBM's Design Travel and Transportation Group. We dive into the thinking behind what Chris calls agentive technology. Just a heads up I wanted to go theoretical in this discussion because part of getting my head around the implications of AI I felt it would be important to get a better understanding on how we would actually interact with this future world.   We cover a lot and Chris offers up some fascinating insights into the roles that interaction design and ethics play into the creation of services and products. All details are in the show notes as well as the books that Chris references.   If you only have a few minutes I recommend: Brand opportunities for agents [41:00] What types of communication are needed to speak to agents [56:24] The role of aesthetics in the role of agents [59:45]   Twitter: @chrisnoessel  

www.departureunknown.com Sebastian is co-creator and chief strategist at Lufthansa’s Innovation Hub. I really enjoyed speaking with Sebastian and think you will enjoy listening to our conversation. Sebastian has a refreshingly real and insightful perspective on pretty much everything. Even if you are not involved in the transportation industry we touch on topics that all of us who travel are dealing with. We get into topics that are out of his day to day and get to the heart of some of the real issues facing the travel industry.   A bit of background, the Lufthansa Innovation Hub scouts and builds startups and digital companies with strong products for travel to jointly co-create innovative offers. Essentially, the innovation hub is a bridge between the travel startup community and the well-established Lufthansa Group.   A quick thank you to the team at Future Travel Experience for introducing me to Sebastian. Even if you are not in aviation FTE is a fascinating resource for events and insights for the world

www.departureunknown.com In this Episode I speak with Hank Scott CEO and Founder of Molon Labe Seating, a seating manufacturer for the aviation industry. Hank is an ex navy test pilot, expert in human factors, lecturer at University of Colorado and pretty fearless as far as I can tell.  What is unique here is that Hank’s company is a start up in an industry that is nearly impossible to break into.   He explains how he built his company, how he used very smart strategic partnerships to build credibility, and details about economy class seats that will probably make you never want to sit in one again. There are some great insights on what to do right and he even speaks about what he did wrong. We do get into the weeds of aircraft seating and the show notes are full of links to the topics, many of which I had never heard of.   So, if you are interested in valuable lessons learned on how to build a company in the aviation industry and what we can expect from economy class seats in the future then you will enjoy t