Michael Martin—From satellites to AI, a life on technology’s cutting edge

I was. My first educational pursuit was photography. I lived in Tokyo and went to school there. When I came back, I got a job in video at a time when there was no video industry. I was working as a systems integrator at the corporate and enterprise level and would help set up all sorts of corporate videos.

I then went to Global Television where I worked as a technical producer, basically setting up television programs, like SCTV. I worked on Expo 86 and several Olympics. I also built Bell ExpressVu, Bell’s satellite TV service; I put together four 5.6-metre satellites that transmitted signals. It was pretty cool.

Bell ExpressVu was the first Internet of Things network I built. When you think about it, it was a real-time network that went out to 200 million homes. I joined IBM in 2005 after a friend said I should come there. Because I knew radio frequencies, I moved to the telecommunications division and started helping utilities do smart metering and things have progressed from there.

I was having a successful career. When I was at the company that did ExpressVu, I became a vice-president and we started acquiring all these companies. I knew the technology side very well, but I was constantly struggling to understand the business stuff. I was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge, so I decided to get that knowledge and be better equipped for success.

I knew about half of the things I needed to know, but didn’t know the other half. The MBA backfilled that half I didn’t know much about. The most important course I took was statistics, even though I was so out of my depths taking it—it was painful—but I fell in love with it. AI, which I do a lot of work with, is built around statistics. It opened the world of AI to me. I’m more comfortable with AI today compared to some of my colleagues because I embraced it.

I learned how to learn. And I got addicted to learning. I’m 62 and still going to school now. Since the MBA I’ve gone to other schools to do a master’s in communications, a master’s of education, and I recently completed an Internet of Things course at MIT. I’d love to do more; there are so many great degrees out there. AU gave me that desire to learn.

As much as I can. A lot of people find this new stuff, like AI and IoT, scary and challenging. Well, I’m meeting with a university to help them figure out how they’re going to better serve their students, faculty, and staff over the next 5 years. I’m working with a mining company on mine automation. I’m working on another project that involves blockchain technology. I’m still working with utilities, too, where we’re using IoT to build the next generation of smart metering. Technology is becoming so intermingled, it’s quite fascinating.

You might think, but it’s not. A photographic lens has the same physical properties as a satellite antenna, which is also a lens, just at a different frequency. A lot of that knowledge is transferred to IoT as well. I’ve been in the same universe for 40 years. But education has helped. If there’s one thing I’ve realized it’s that in today’s society, we need to be lifelong learners.