Upskill your workforce with AI
Constitute interviews Dayana Roman, CEO of Viblio
Dayana Roman, Founder & CEO ApprenDO Srl with www.viblio.com- Innovative Start up that optimizes up-skilling and re-skilling
[CONSTITUTE] I‘m really happy to welcome my friend to the Verso newsletter, Dayana Roman, CEO of Viblio. Welcome, Dayana.
[DAYANA] Hi everybody, I’m so happy to be here, not only because we are friends, but because I think it’s wonderful to talk about AI or all this stuff together. Very necessary, so thank you very much for inviting me.
[CONSTITUTE] So, tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you’re up to these days.
[DAYANA] Oh my God. Okay. So first of all, I am a mom of two young kids. And yes, I’ve been working as a professional affiliate in the Sant’Anna of Pisa University. I’m mainly focusing on reskilling strategies using technologies, and how technology is impacting on the workforce competencies. Basically not only about technical competence, but also soft competences and transversal competences. And then I’ve been working as a consultant in HR, management, and organizational problems for companies in the last 20 years. I’ve been working for huge companies that are trying to achieve business goals and how to translate into strategies and how to improve the competences of workers to achieve those business goals. This is basically my experience. And now I am running a startup, so I think I must define myself as a start-upper.
[CONSTITUTE] I love that with all your experience. And I mean, you’re building an AI company. So tell us what Viblio does and also what it’s like to build an AI company all the way up in Udine. It’s not really a place where many startups are growing, or maybe I’m wrong?
[DAYANA] No, no, it’s difficult. Not because we are in a place where it’s difficult, rather it can be hard to have access to talents and to people with these specific competences. To open and run a new company is basically to have full remotely developers that are located in the entire world. It’s not a local company, it’s an international company, and as such we have chosen to not put borders to our people and to where the people are located, and manage all the competences around offering a full remotely contract and managing in that way.
It’s strange because I am a sociologist, not a technician of AI, but I’m just so curious about AI technology. I just decided to have a master course in artificial intelligence at MIT. So it’s the connection that I found, how to mix technical competence with sociological organizational competence — how to translate it to business strategy, what people are looking for and how to use technology to help workers to update and to be up-to-date, personalizing as much as we can the offer just to try to engage them in a personal experience of growing competences every day. So basically that is what Viblio wants to achieve, to reduce complexity, to help people to choose wisely in connection with their inspirations, their values, their goals and what the role is asking them to do every day.
[CONSTITUTE] One of the things I’ve noticed in the Italian marketplace at least is that brands are very interested in adopting AI platforms and technologies, but mostly to cut costs. Your Viblio is proposing to use AI to really upskill, re-skill people. Is there really a demand from companies who want to use AI for their work, for the betterment of their workforce?
[DAYANA] Well, let me try to be simple and describe this. The answer is yes, it’s a need. Not always well known how, but let me give you an example on how the AI can serve the upskilling. Imagine that you have a huge company that has like 1,000 employees inside. If you want to offer a personalized path to your employees, it’s difficult to take care of all of them without technology, because you have to understand how they make a decision, which tasks they do every day, which are the cutting edge technologies that will impact on their individual roles. So this is basically impossible to do all in the same moment in a different way for every person. And this is how technology can serve in the upskilling of a critical mass of employee, everyone giving the perception and giving them the possibility to express how they want to achieve, but also which is the way their task are changing and to try to define a specific offer for each specific individual in a specific and personalized way. I mean, if it’s not this necessary, this is not a need. I mean, I am very confused about how companies are taking the technology issue today. They should understand that it’s an opportunity and it’s an opportunity to cover a social need, that it’s to take care about the competence of their own workers.
[CONSTITUTE] I love that, and it is very important. And I think it’ll be even more evident as the technology gap increases, right? And the rate of change accelerates even more with AI. Now, what do you think needs to be done before AI is more widely adopted in society, in companies, worldwide, anywhere?
[DAYANA] Well, there are a few issues that, for example, in my specific sector of education and digital transformation in education, that I want to share with you. The first one is just trying to make people study technology, AI, but not from a technical point of view. I think that we need to teach managers to be translators about the opportunities in technology and how they can translate. You know, MIT calls these kinds of role translators. This is not a technical role, nor a business role: it’s a role that makes people communicate between technology and how technology can be used and can help business processes and also education. So, the first is just to try to understand that this AI is not only for technicians and it’s not only something that it’s going to impact transforming the way we things do, but it’s also that we are requiring people to understand the basic of the technology and connect between business goals, processes, and how technology can be implemented in their specific landscapes or context. So the first requirement is this: let the people study in a general way how we can use technology.
Second one is just to talk to and as a society to start to understand how we can use technology ethically. So we have also to define which is the reference as ethically, the ethical reference of usage of AI. So it’s a kind of a platform of limitations. Now, I don’t like to say limitations, but how the opportunities of AI we can just transform inside of our society and how as a society, we can just give also a limitation about how to use AI and how this AI, for example, cannot represent a risk to create differences, to increase inequalities or differences because we use the data information is not in a correct way. This is only an example. So the second requirement is that we take the responsibility to talk about the ethics of how to use AI.
[CONSTITUTE] Now let me ask you about the future. So I feel like 2023 is like what the metaverse was in 2022 and what NFTs were in 2021. We’re in a hype bubble of AI: everyone and their mothers and fathers and cousins are jumping into the AI train. So, what is your prediction on where we’ll be next year in 2024 with all these startups? Is the AI startup ecosystem a bubble ready to burst?
[DAYANA] Well, no, I think that it’s going to increase. Absolutely. As I said, it’s going to become a commodity. I think that we are achieving a level that was similar to when Microsoft created tools to do some basic things that we already don’t even know. And, you know, like we did manually, or in a process of task that in sequence, they were automated. And AI is going to do the same for us. I mean, there are some functions that we are acquiring and they are going to become general, like specific technologies that are going to be the base to build other things. So, we are not going to perceive a distance between the base and what we can build, you know, upper and upper these kinds of base or pillars. I think it’s going to grow up and I think it’s going to be fundamental for us to understand how this can augment our capabilities and the way to focus on the value, the values, the things that we as a human have and a peculiarity. And how to use it, like to use more valuable, our time, our competences.
[CONSTITUTE] Love the positive outlook and going along with that theme: here at Constitute, we believe that Web3 should be used for good, all its technologies. So whether that’s AI, whether it’s blockchain, whether it’s AR, VR. And I was wondering, do you know of any individuals, organizations or initiatives that are using Web3 technologies to build a better society?
[DAYANA] Yeah, well, I have some good friends that are working to create, for example, in Metaverse, some disruptive, intraoperative platform just to let people connect. Don’t think of connection commercially, in a platform that is only used by their users, but rather to let all users in this kind of Web3 opportunities and possibilities, to give them interoperability between all the metaverse platforms that are trying to grow up and to offer services and offer new ways to interact between us. So there’s good friends that believe in Web3, but I mean, what we have now it’s only an anticipation. It’s a process still growing up, to serve society in new ways, to be connected between us.
Of course, there are some risks that we have to avoid. Isolation, for example, is one of the examples, typically, that we have to take care about. But that is a part that we have to talk about as a society and take the opportunities and the risks about how to work, and how to create beauty and opportunities in technology.
The technology is neutral. The way that we use is going to give a meaning that could be bad or good. So yeah, I don’t know if I can say who they are, but I have a few of them and you are one of them. So I think it’s one of the possibilities that we have to support the people that are building this for society, yes.
[CONSTITUTE] And I had one last question before I let you go, a personal one. I mean, you were a mid-career professional doing well at your job and you chose to get curious and go all the way to MIT to learn more about artificial intelligence and your background is not in tech. So can you tell us more about what led you to really make this pivot and be a female entrepreneur in tech?
[DAYANA] Wow, this is a really difficult question to answer because, well, I can tell you that it’s unconsciousness. No, I think it’s a kind of conviction that I have an open mindset. I have a growth mindset. I think we can really learn new things at any age, to be open and curious. And we have the possibility if we want, that that curiosity and possibility is like to you to understand things that you consider that are impossible to learn. But if you think that it’s not impossible, that you give you the possibility I give myself, I was so in doubt about my capability to do that, but I understood that my curiosity was bigger than my fear. Sometimes I feel like I am not an expert, a real technical expert on this. And because of that I use advisors, people that I trust and I just share. I always want to understand the why of things and also concerning the technologies that it’s what I did. I mean, I don’t have to know how to do something, but I have to understand how something is done. And I think that this specific characteristic helps me to overcome fear, to feel matches as a capability to go forward and to start and run my company. But it was also thanks to the people in my family that believed in me, my friends, and all the support I received when I was studying, because I was like kind of nervous when I was doing the path. And I think it’s normal. But it was so funny and I just, as I said before, the growth mindset, I think, is the condition that led me to do it.
[CONSTITUTE] Well, Diane, thank you so much for sharing your story, your insights. On the last note, I mean, where can people find Viblio? Is it live? Is it a B2C? Or is it still B2B? And let us know how our community can help you.
[DAYANA] Yes, of course. You can go to www.viblio.com and it’s not open. It’s not really open because we are doing the launch in the next month. Also, the B2C community is not open yet, but you can ask to be a beta tester, so you can just ask and we offer to you the possibility to get inside of the platform and try to use it. It’s very simple because you can just give your names and then you are going to be on board, define which is your role, and then Viblio is going to do all the rest for you — trying to understand who you are, which are your goals, and give to you advice and suggestions, recommendations about how to work in your growth. It’s like that. It’s just easy like that. It’s not really open, but if you ask, we are going to open the doors for you, for all the people that ask.
[CONSTITUTE] Alright, exclusive access for the Verso community! Thank you again, Diana, for your time today.
[DAYANA] Don’t worry, it was a pleasure. It was a pleasure really. Thank you for the invitation.
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