Today, Tom Dumoulin rolled into Pink at the Giro d’Italia (held in Jerusalem!). I know, this is May, not April… but I mention this because one of my favorite pieces of news in April is about Sunweb’s sponsorship engagement. His team has signed an unprecedented new agreement with its title sponsor, which will back the team on an indefinite basis. Other cool articles are about artificial intelligence, the evolution of finance in the last 10 years… or a very moving Russian animation about homeless people.

President Macron’s stance towards artificial intelligence – positive, optimistic & pragmatic – is a symbol of his overall attitude of what a leading nation should be. He outlines his vision about the andmitingly rather narrow topic of AI in France in this interview to WIRED’s Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Thompson. Macron: “Artificial intelligence will disrupt all the different business models and it’s the next disruption to come. So I want to be part of it. Otherwise I will just be subjected to this disruption without creating jobs in this country.“

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The tweet says it all. Published in March, I discovered this WSJ article/page about how finance has changed (in the US) in April: “The Wall Street Journal takes a look at some of the most eventful aspects of [the federal response to the financial crisis] and how we got to where we are today.” As we at WiSEED prepare for our 10th anniversary event, it was also a useful piece of inspiration for me to set up the program.

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This is poignant. For the Russian Homeless People’s Day (on March 27th), the Takie Dela website launched a scroll-based interactive animation called Zhili|Byli [Once Upon a Time] telling five true stories of homeless people who recently passed away. Beautifully drawn by Polya Plavinskaya and animated by Viktoriya Spiryagina, the five stories put names, ages and backgrounds on people we often barely look see. In Russia or elsewere.

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Less than a month and the data-protection regulation GDPR goes into effect. This is the most concise and useful article that I found about this topic – yet it is certainly not the only one. Don’t get me wrong: it doesn’t say ALL you need to do as a marketer to seek GDPR complience… but it provides a couple of very concrete examples of what you ought NOT to do anymore under the new rules.

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First we clicked, then we swiped, now we scroll (the Russian projets cited above is another example of this trend, the article below about the news feed too). “What is it about this magical design pattern that has so many consumer web companies using it?” asks Nir Eyal, author whose articles I already blogged about last year. His conclusion: “The mobile ability to load dynamic content quickly […] has addictive characteristics, and mobile has practically become attached to our bodies at some level.“

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This isn’t so much an article about data protection and privacy as one about business strategy and investors pushing for monetization. Data analytics and prediction company Palantir started with major public clients (i.e. government) on security issues, but is now looking to monetize its technology with corporate ones (i.e. companies). But in an age where the latter don’t want to be associated with borderline data analysis practices, that may prove to become difficult.

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This blog posts asks whether companies will/can struck a balance between dumb (ex: chronologically ordered) and smart (ex: with algorithmic recommendations) news feeds. Or between feeds ans other formats. Is the news feed a thing of the past, replaced by stories and messaging and video ? “Though [feeds] look like they reduce sharing overload, you really want group chats. [And] when you have 10 WhatsApp groups […] you think ‘maybe there should be a screen with a feed of the new posts in all of my groups” Evans says. A neverending story?

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The business model that underpins professional cycling teams is based in brand (and increasingly country) sponsorships. Some struggle at the moment, some are running on good partnerships, some secure great, great deals for the future! Like Sunweb. The company signed an “indefinite” sponsorship deal: “Our partnership […] contributes hugely to our business goal of significant international growth in summer and winter holidays,” Sunweb’s CCO says in a statement. They’ll be happy with Dumoulin’s win, which will have him carry it through Israel & Sicily, if not further, in the next days.

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Enjoy the week-end!