#363 Making Industry 4.0 Viable: When the Real World Meets Digital Transformation

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (0:00)
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation. Before we dive in, I wanted to personally thank you for listening. Many of the ideas we discuss on this show inspired my new book, AI Augmented Teams. If you're looking for practical ways to combine human expertise and AI to achieve better outcomes, I think you'll find it valuable.
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation, where we explore how people process policy and technology drive effective change. This is Dr. Darren, chief enterprise architect, educator, author, and most importantly, your host.
On this episode, Making Industry 4 Viable, When the Real World Meets Digital Transformation with Evan J. Schwartz, innovation executive and technology strategist. Evan, welcome to the show.

**Evan J. Schwartz** (1:23)
Hey, Darren. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (1:25)
Hey, we got a really interesting topic. We're dealing with real things in the real world and digital transformation around those things and something that everyone deals with but no one talks about, which is garbage and recycling and supply chain, all these things that we all deal with.
But when we first talked and went, hey, this is a really interesting topic and how digital transformation has completely transformed that whole industry. But before we do that, everyone that listens to my show knows that I only have superheroes on the show, and every superhero has a background story. So Evan, what's your background story?

**Evan J. Schwartz** (2:09)
I wanted to be a chemist, and I had stayed on that road for a while, while technology was one of the things that just came very easy to me. I learned how to program out of the back of Commodore magazine. If anyone-

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (2:22)
Oh yeah.

**Evan J. Schwartz** (2:23)
Wow. They used to have. So a good friend of mine who's in my book, John Leonard, who was also on the chemistry track, used to sit there for hours reading out that code in the back while I was hand jamming it in and trying to save it to like a big 20 tape cassette. Anyone that's ever done that knows how fragile that event is and how hours of time can evaporate on you. But I never gave in to it. And while that wasn't my profession, it was just so easy. I started a gaming company at 16 called La Cath Industries for dial-up bulletin board systems.
And I just loved it. And when we first released it around the world, it was FidoNet, there was no Internet, it was dial-up BBS, it was almost passing the hose, right? This is a long time ago.
And we sold this graphic game online. We built this entire protocol called DDOFX, which is Digital Dynamic Online Effects Language, full event-based, graphical. I mean, before even HTML was heard of, this was over a BBS. And we were like, this is it. This is where it's going to be, right? We released that thing and it went around the world in less than 20 days. And it was like a file-bone style, passing the packets around. And I remember riding on my bicycle up to the post office on 3rd Street in Neptune Beach.
And I opened my little box. I could only afford a $25 a month mailbox. And there were these three keys on it with these big orange things on the back. And I was stupid. I didn't know. So I grabbed these, took them up to the post office. I'm like, hey, man, someone left some keys in my post office box. He patted me on the head and he pointed to the big bins at the bottom and said, they go in there, they'll stay in there, your mail is in there. When I opened up, there were Santa Claus bags full of orders in those bins.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (4:07)
That is so awesome, Evan.

**Evan J. Schwartz** (4:09)
I had to call my dad to come pick me up to bring all this stuff. And that's when he found out that I had started the company and I was selling this stuff. And he's like, what is it exactly you're doing? He didn't understand software at all. I mean, even up into the point he passed away, God bless him, he was very salt of the earth.
I was scamming people. Because I couldn't get him to understand what a piece of software was. He wanted to know how many of them you had.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (4:33)
Because it's not something you can physically handle.

**Evan J. Schwartz** (4:34)
That's right. He's like, look at the disk. Is it this thing? He's like, no, no. Because I forced our buyers to send me a disk mailer with a disk and a check.