WIP at CES 2023

What we learned at CES about how tech is changing the way we work

A conversation with Laura Demarse, Ford Motor Company; Barbara Humpton, Siemens; and Felecia Pryor, John Deere at CES
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For this episode of Work in Progress, I headed to Las Vegas for CES 2023, the huge Consumer Electronics Show.

As usual, there were thousands of cool new consumer products on display, including a wireless OLED TV at the LG booth, all kinds of at-home health care products, and a robot that was roaming the showroom floor apparently on its own.

That was all very interesting, of course, but I was mostly there to talk to business and workforce development leaders about how all this tech innovation is playing out in the workforce. In other words, someone has to make these new products, so what kind of skills do you need to have to be a part of this dominating tech industry.

A lot of leaders wanted to talk about this and I’ve a lot of great interviews in the coming weeks.

I’m kicking it off with some of my conversations at leaders from some well-known brands: Ford Motor Company, John Deere, and Siemens. The first two sell direct-to-consumer and the latter is B2B but has a role in so much of what we, as consumers, use in our everyday life.

I spoke with Laura Demarse, workforce development leader at Ford; Barbara Humpton, CEO of Siemens; and Felecia Pryor, chief people officer for Deere.

Our conversations centered around how each of those companies is really a tech company requiring tech workers. In each discussion, we talked about the type of skills they are hiring for and how they are working to upskill or reskill current employees.

Listen here, or download the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Oh, and here is that cool robot we spotted on the CES floor.

We spotted this cool robot on the CES 2023 floor

We spotted this on the CES 2023 floor. The robot was seemingly self-guided. When someone, or something, got in its way it stopped. Not sure who made it, but it was a lot of fun! Now that we have your attention, check out the Work in Progress podcast on how tech is changing the way we work.

Episode 257: Barbara Humpton, Siemens; Laura Demarse, Ford Motor Company; Felecia Pryor, John Deere Company
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts