GraceBlocks Pillar #9: Intelligence

Earlier this year, we started talking about a new initiative at GraceRock: the building of GraceBlocks. Each post we’re covering a pillar until we have the complete set of 9. We’re finally ready to talk about our last pillar. It’s far easier to write about pillars than to build them. This means that while we write about our last pillar we’re still busy building pillars 1, 2, and 3. Again you have to start somewhere, and yes, these pillars have been put in rank order in terms of how we plan to build them. Perhaps you might think, why write about pillar #9 when it’s so far off in the future? It’s so we can hold ourselves accountable to our foundational strategy. When you build software, every change you make has an opportunity to re-enforce your core foundation. It also has the possibility of becoming clutter, and complexity without adding true value. As we continue to evolve our solution, it will be with the lens of their alignment to our core pillars. We’ll weigh every feature we build in terms of pillar alignment. With all this in mind, we bring you our thoughts on Pillar #9: Intelligence!

While workflow (pillar #8) might bring intelligent automation, that’s not what we mean by Intelligence. For that, we are talking about the next level of infusing knowledge into the platform. Yes, we are talking about artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, and that stuff that gets fuzzy and black-boxish. But we’re also talking about intelligent linkages and access to data from the “outside.”

AI and Machine Learning product extensions via Google Cloud

While we plan to allow control over data-location and cloud provider options we are focused first on the Google Cloud for a specific reason. They have made a tremendous amount of progress on the AI front. As we continue to build the GraceBlocks platform, we plan to support overlay plugins where data can be pushed through Google’s AI building blocks that currently today include but is not limited to AI for Vision, Video, Natural Language, Translation, Speech to Text / Text to Speech, Cross-Device chatbot flow, Inference, and Recommendations. Today, they clearly have the lead in providing building blocks off of which to build amazing AI. Our goal for GraceBlocks is to provide point and click options that leverage these extensions to build AI options that can sit atop, and augment the systems they build on GraceBlocks.

Rich Data Sets

There are some datasets that everyone can use. For example, Google’s Places API brings a normalization option to location data that is an administrator’s dream. When a user starts typing a location auto-suggest no only serves up the options but allows the full storage of the location formation in a robust fashion that will not require excessive rework. Having data like this at the ready for enterprise systems solves what otherwise can become massive downstream data issues. With GraceBlocks our plan is to allow point and click access to structured datasets like Google Places or that have been built by other users on GraceBlocks. We also plan to let users both leverage and offer point and click access to datasets they want to expose. If you build a rich system of data on GraceBlocks, you could monetize it just like Google monetizes their places API. It might be a robust set of data about educational institutions, or a data-set about skills, competencies, and interview questions. Or it might be data about construction, yarn, dogs, video games,or anything else you might think of.

The power is in ease of assembly

Having access to great building blocks is cool, but perhaps it’s all just a bit too abstract for you? We hope seeing these GraceBlocks in action will help bring this all together in a way that’s far easier to understand. And, if it’s still too much, know there will be expert Block Builders waiting to help you at GraceRock, which will continue on as the consulting services side of this house.

There you have it!

With that, we’ve held ourselves accountable to all 9 pillars. Soon we’ll be unveiling a bit about the experience and plans for early beta access. Our goal is to have the first few users giving us feedback before the end of this month. Time is tight! We’ll see if we make it. Wish us luck!

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Want to stay informed?

Request early access here. And we’ll keep you posted as we continue building GraceBlocks!

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Read about the other pillars here:

• 9 Pillar’s summary post
• Pillar #1: Security
• Pillar #2: Ease
• Pillar #3: Search
• Pillar #4: Collaboration
• Pillar #5: Integration
• Pillar #6: Control
• Pillar #7: Tracking
• Pillar #8: Workflow

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