Here is this week’s instalment of the (hopefully mostly) weekly round-up of things on my site. And remember: like, share, and subscribe (see the end of this article).

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Three Things

1. I’ve returned to the office.

My firm has started to return to work, as of June 8, 2020. We’re going back in staggered fashion, and I’m part of the first 25% to go back. It’s been nice being back in, and planting that flag for my department. It’s a little like Christmas week – traffic is really light, and our office is very empty. Everyone is playing music – just not Christmas carols.

2. I played tourist on a run.

I work quite close to Stanley Park, and literally steps (there’s a stairway) from the Vancouver seawall. So, I took my gear to work and booted past Cardero’s and the Westin Bayshore (two landmarks in the area) and ran to the Harry Jerome statue. You can see the post here, and the photo gallery here.

3. I wrote about the BC Strata Insurance Crisis

This one surprised me. I run a modest blog – I’m lucky if I get a handful of hits per day. This post about the strata insurance crisis – posted late on a Friday afternoon, no less – has had surprising readership. If you missed it, go have a look.

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Random Links I Found Interesting

There’s a fantastic article on Wired, profiling one of the big brains behind artificial intelligence. AI will be a big buzzword in the insurance world in the next few years, taking over routine tasks like straightforward claims processing, policy rating, and (gulp) fraud detection.

I’ve posted on Twitter and LinkedIn that Zoom became the darling at the start of the pandemic working-from-home lockdown, and that it was like they somehow invented video conferencing. Meanwhile at Microsoft in Redmond Washington, a secure solution with important features (like cross-platform availability, noise suppression, no-account required web interfaces, and up to 250 person meetings with no time limits) and esoteric ones (custom backgrounds) has been available in two flavours – Teams and Skype – for a long time. This article from the Wall Street Journal via the Toronto Star outlines the battle for video-conferencing. Time to remember that some of the older tech companies are still here because they are leadership-class.

I’ve mentioned before that I think Insurance Thought Leadership is a platform that you should read and follow. They feature guest writers who are knowledgeable, and who offer thoughtful long-form pieces. This week it was worth reading Denise Garth’s piece on the future of automobile insurance. Let’s be honest – that future is extinction. This was a fascinating read on how the industry will get there.

I’ve been watching how Harley Davidson has been performing lately (poorly). This week, they were both kicked from the Standard & Poors 500 index due to their shrunken market capitalization, and were forced to take a $350 Million USD, 364-day “credit facility” (line of credit) to bolster their liquidity. If I could take that sort of line of credit, I’d be less worried about the strata insurance issues.

On a lighter note, last Monday was International Motorcycle and Scooter Ride to Work day. The Ride to Work organization is trying to help promote many ideas to get people to treat their bikes as more than toys, such as free parking for motorcycles (like the City of Toronto), or lane splitting and filtering (like California). They even led me to a great article in Canada Moto Guide from two years ago this week, which addresses some of these issues.

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Upcoming articles

Here are the things that I’m working on for the blog.

Insuriosity – I am kicking around a few ideas for my next long-form post, now that have completed the piece on strata insurance. Likely my next target will be autonomous vehicles, electric and other alternative fuel vehicles, or a confluence of both.

Fitness – I am nearing the end of the long form piece on my history with exercise technology and data logging. That will likely be out later this week. I like to think this one will be worth the read.

Motorcycling – I’m putting together the piece on the off-road course I took, with an accompanying photo gallery, plus a video blog (vlog) that I’ve recorded and have to splice together. That should be up by the end of June.

Photography – A collection of the photos from the off-road school, taken by me and the school’s resident photographer.

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Have a fantastic week!